|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
After the morning's walk & swim and a final cup of tea, the talk turns to a desire for coffee and we head off to our overnight stop before the Mt Kinabalu climb...
View of the mountain from our scenic & comfortable hotel...
Looking at the sign, there appears to be a problem with very camp Thunderbirds characters trespassing...
We had planned to take the Mesilau trail, but heavy rain had recently trapped people in between swollen streams so our starting point was the more standard Timpohon Gate route...
Henry and the trail map, day 1 is a 6km hike to Laban Rata...
Disconcertingly the path descends for the first few hundred yards to the pretty Carson Falls, before starting to rise up...
There were a few bus shelter-like stopping points on the way to Laban Rata each populated with squirrels that had avoided the pot at the restaurant earlier in the trip...
This one is called the Plastic plant and it did feel like those plastic plants you get in offices or shopping centres...
Day 1 of the climb was largely through misty forest...
We arrived at Laban Rata in good time and beat that day's rain, which meant we were able to watch the poor bedraggled souls that had left later and hadn't been so lucky. Rain shower over, the sun appears and we get our first views...
Looking up, we still had around 2.5km to walk with 800m to ascend the next morning over bare rock... this is a false bluff the peak is some distance behind it...
After dinner and a briefing we all attempted to get some sleep from about 19:30, as we would be up at 01:30 to try and get to the summit before sunrise... We all shared a dorm bunk room and spent the night listening to snoring, pee breaks, sleep talking and general restlessness; I'm not sure any of us got much sleep...
