It's Worth it for the Sunrise

The title is actually a heading for a section of the Lonely Planet Malaysia guidebook that deals with the hike to the top of Mt. Kinabalu. The irony will become clear further on in the post.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my lack of activity on this blog in the past several days. Mr. Cham has kept Nathan and I unbelievably busy with the terrible burden of fine dining, fabulous company, and the wonderful sights and smells of that lovely little metropolis they call Kota Kinabalu. That's my excuse, and as proof, it's midnight here and I'm fighting to keep my eyelids open as I fulfill my duty to my loyal readers. Therefore, believe me when I say this is my first free 30 minutes in the last three days.

But enough about that. So! Mt. Kinabalu. The mountain is about 14000 feet or 4000 meters, was first climbed in 1851, and boasts a 8.5 kilometer climb covering about 6,800 ft. That's about a 680 story building... We started the climb at about 10AM with nothing but some of Mr. Cham's hard boiled eggs in our pockets and self confident smiles on our faces. I think Nathan and I understood the mathematics of what we had to do that first day, 6km, literally every step of which was up, up, up, up. But we didn't quite get what that actually meant. We stopped about every kilometer as the air thinned, the trees thinned and our endurance thinned. We made it to the rest house below the peak after four grueling hours and collapsed thankfully into the chairs inside.

The rest house is another 2.5 kilometers below the peak, but it was where we were to spend the night before heading out at 3:00AM the next morning to make the peak before sunrise. We ate dinner, watched an uncommonly beautiful sunset, got cold in the thin air, and met other hikers (coolest ones: Joel and Jen, a Kiwi-Malaysian couple in Uni in New Zealand, and forgot-her-name, an Aussie who had taken Russian at community college. Not so coolest ones: The Angry Australian. I don't know what this guy's deal was, but we ran into him about 8 times on a very large mountain and he was always whining and ticked off about something or another. He didn't make it to the top. Justice.)

We got a good night's sleep, got up at 2AM had a quick breakfast and prepared for the toughest part of the climb. We knew the top would be cold and windy, so we packed all of the warm gear we'd packed for our trip through one of the warmest places in the world. On Mr. Cham's suggestion, we'd bought gloves and beanies to supplement our rain coats, long pants, and warm socks. We started up at 3AM and quickly passed the already struggling hikers who'd left earlier. By the time we made it halfway through the last 2.5km, we were pretty much alone, well ahead of the pack. The going was tough. There were thick ropes to pull yourself up the steep rock faces, puddles of freezing water to accidentally step in, not to mention the unbelievable cold, the pitch blackness (we had lamps) and the ferocious wind that you can only experience on top of a mountain. Additionally, the thin air meant that every exertion made your heart hammer and caused you to gasp for breath. Despite our frequent and painful breaks, we summited Mt. Kinabalu at 4:50AM.

That's when the real ordeal began. My joy at finishing the climb was quickly replaced by the realization that I was freezing. Nathan and I huddled behind a rock, safe from the wind and began the wait for the sunrise at 6AM that was supposed to make it all worth it. I was wet from hiking up through a cloud so I wrapped a towel around my head and put my extra pair of dry socks on my hands and pulled my gloves on over them in a vain attempt to keep them warm. Then it started raining. I couldn't believe it. However, we believed that the sun would burn off the cloud and all the people on the other side of the rock we couldn't see would enjoy the incredible view that was supposed to make it all worth it. However, after 1 hour 15 minutes on the summit, with the sun brightening through a wall of raincloud, we realized that no one else was waiting up there. Everyone who'd made it up with us was already well on their way back down.

Thus, soaked through, with the temperature hovering just above freezing, and the wind whipping us violently we decided we needed to start down. And FAST. I was shaking violently and all the mirth of our shared misery at the top turned into a very real fear that we wouldn't be able to make it down the slick and steep granite in the condition we were both in. Luckily, with no little exertion, and a few falls on rubbery and freezing legs, we warmed up enough to only make the descent down to the rest house mildly terrifying. At the rest house, several cups of hot coffee and wrapping myself in a warm blanket helped to ward off danger and allowed us to find out from our fellow climbers that probably less than 1/3 of the people had made it to the top. The rain had caught almost all of them on the trail up and most immediately turned back. This, of course, made making it all the more special and we almost forgot the disappointment of not getting to see the ultimate Borneo sunrise...

We eventually made it all the way back down and back to KK by the afternoon. It was in the high 80s in KK, which was a stark contrast to the freezing rain and the 30s of the summit. It was amazing that less than 12 hours after wondering if I'd ever be warm ever again in my life, I was, in fact, perhaps too warm. But I forgot my misery, enjoyed another 5 star meal and prepared for white water rafting the next day!