Suetology: Best Birthday Gift to Meself! (Reaching the top of Mt KK)

YES! I did it ! I conquered Mt Kinabalu a day before my birthday !

It was my most wonderful birthday celebration ever. The feeling when I reached the summit is pure heaven. I just sat at one of the rocks, trying to catch my breath and to take in all the beautiful view around me. It was still a little dark with strips of red/orange in the sky. One of the tour guide there, Abang Di had to keep reminding me take out my camera for him to snap pictures for me. Thank you Abang Di, you're the best! I still couldn't believe it myself that I made it since walking up the stairs of Batu Caves is enough to make me feel faint. My dear cousin who was laughing at me when I said I'm going to climb Mt KK couldn't believe it either. We bet on a meal...so now i'm getting a free meal. Muahahaha. For those who said I was too woman to do it ..eat your words back!

Basically for me, ascending the mountain is much easier than descending (although my friends like the descending part , i also dunno why :P). I really hate the descending part. We ascended in the dark so we can't see how dangerous some part is until you descended in the early morning light. I got bruises cos I kept slipping descending. It gets boring as you have to keep watching the ground with rocks.

So here are the pictures on my crazy adventure....

Above is a group picture taken before we start our journey on the Timpohon trail. As you can see, everyone looked very excited and energetic...but after several km, nobody looked this fresh anymore. We had to walk about 6km to reach Laban Rata where we stayed over for a night before continuing our journey to the summit the next day.

This is our porter who carried our bigger bags up. Poor woman but she said she's used to it.
They don't seem to carry any food or water with them. I didn't realise this earlier in the journey. After my 4km, I shared my sandwich with her and I regretted I didn't offer to her earlier.

Note: Share your food with your porter/tourguide, you probably are carrying too much food up anyway.

We took pictures for every km we reached. It's always a relief when we see another km signboard.

And of course, we had to camwhore a little along the way. For me the view after the 4th KM is beautiful with all the dwarfed trees. I'm doing a little kungfu meditation so that I can just fly up to the top..

After walking about 5 to 6 hours, I was so happy when I saw this yellow roof building. It mean rests and food finally!! But when the receptionist told me that we had to walk about another 500m up to our hostel, I almost strangled the poor girl. So I had my food, icy cold shower and rest (though i couldn't sleep a wink) and proceeded to wake up about 2.00am to continue our journey to the summit. With only our headlights strapped on our head, we proceeded to walk in the dark. There are parts that I find myself alone with nothing but the light on my head to guide me. Kinda freak me out a little as I kept wondering if i got lost or something.

Wahaha.. I was almost breathless but still insisted to take this darn picture.

When I reached the summit, I just sat for quite some time to catch my breath. I didn't want to move at all but thank god, Abang Di kept asking me to take out my camera.

Note: bring a waterproof glove! I thought mine was, but it wasn't as it was soaked thru on the first rope climb. So when I reached the peak, i quickly take it off but it was so cold that I decided to just put back on my wet gloves.

On top of the world feeling. OK.. now I can strike off Mt KK in my to-do-list! If only they have bungee jump then I can strike both off and save maybe part of the awful journey down maybe.