Mount Kinabalu 2010 - The Aftermath

After replenishing ourselves with peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and franks and beans, we didn't rest long at base camp before packing up and starting to head down the mountain.

The first hour was great!

The second hour was tedious.

The third hour was excruciating.

I thought it would just fly by - since it took us four hours to get up to base camp, it had to be twice as fast on the way down, right?  But like Everest, the descent is the most dangerous part.  Your legs are tired, your knees are stiff, it's slippery from the rain and cloud mists, so if you stumble and fall here you could find yourself tumbling down about a hundred steps.  Then they call in the helicopter to get you down, and as tired as I was, I would rather walk.

Finally finally finally, we reached the bottom!

(Check out our guide's calves - they're huge!  Also note that he did the whole thing in Crocs.)

We collected our "congratulations, you officially made it to the summit" color certificates (if you didn't make it all the way to the top, you only get black-and-white "nice try" certificates).  We made it back to the hotel just in time for our 90-minute hot stone massages.  Afterward, a fight broke out between David and I when he suggested that we dress up and go to the Indian restaurant at the hotel.  After over ten hours of climbing and descending, there was no way I was going to be talked out of sitting on the hotel bed in my bathrobe, watching bad cable TV, and falling asleep with a a huge cheeseburger and beer in my stomach.  I didn't care if that was boring, it was the only thing I had the energy for.

The next morning, my legs were really really really sore.  Like, I'm-not-sure-I-can-make-it-to-the-bathroom sore.  We hobbled down to breakfast, with the staff giggling at us and saying, "Oh, you must have climbed the mountain!"

As our last Borneo treat, we went scuba diving.  Though there weren't a lot of fish to see, the swim felt pretty good on our legs and the scenery was spectacular.

Thus ends Borneo Part Two.  And even though I couldn't walk right for days, I'd go back there again in a second.  To the beach I mean.  Not the mountain, are you kidding me?

Mount Kinabalu 2010 - Via Ferrata

Our to-climb-or-not-to-climb argument reached its climax when I finally found out what a "via ferrata" was.  David had described it as "like a ladder" going down, "with steps and things".  Then I saw the video.  Harnessed in, you crawl over cliffs and balance over wire tightropes, all with hundred foot drops in the background.  "Are you kidding me?" I asked, "I'm not doing that, I'm afraid of heights!"  "How are you afraid of heights, we used to go rock climbing."  "I only did that because I wanted you to like me."  I'm not so much afraid of heights, but they make me dizzy and nauseous, and then I picture myself losing my balance and toppling over, plunging to an undignified death.  So I just really try to avoid that feeling.  "The Highest Via Ferrata In The World!"  all the posters boasted throughout the base camp.  David had failed to mention this, too.

I also found out that morning that this ropes course thing doesn't take us to the bottom of the mountain, it just takes you back to base camp.  The long way around.  I'm doing this for David, I reminded myself.

That first step is a doozy.

David kept saying "Wow, look at the view!  Look down!"  I just responded with "No thank you", and climbed on, staring only at the rock in front of me.  Here was my view:

Or up, sometimes I looked up.

It was a moment like this when one of Jerry Seinfeld's bits comes to mind.  "Another great activity where your main goal is to... not die."

"Don't die, don't die don't die don't die, there's a tree there's a rock who cares don't die..."

Rest stop!  Starting to strip down the layers, it's getting warmer...

Notice David hanging out comfortably, and me clinging to the wall.

The last small hurdle was a balance beam.  Not a problem after the tightrope walking.

Almost there!

Another hour or so and we were back for our "western-style" Second Breakfast at base camp.  Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, this time with the addition of franks and beans.  What do these people think Westerners eat?  Though I've learned that a Western-style breakfast to Asians pretty much means "not noodles".

Next - Am I Doing Permanent Damage To My Knees?  Otherwise known as the final descent.

Mount Kinabalu 2010 - The Summit

It was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, the same as our snack yesterday.  Which wouldn't have been so bad but it was pretty much Wonderbread and Jiffy.  Not exactly the best fuel for a six hour hike.

Check out the clock - that's AM, folks.

Our guide showed up promptly at 2:30am to go over the schedule for the day.  "It will take about 3 hours for the 2.7K to the summit, you will watch the sun rise, and then 5-6 hours for the Via Ferrata, and then we will be back here for second breakfast.  After that maybe three hours to get down."  Wait, WHAT?  This could take another twelve hours?  No one told me this would take another twelve hours, I had a massage appointment to get back for!

I'm only smiling on the outside.

And we were off.  

It started out warm, and we had to go slow because were stuck in back of the big group of Taiwanese tourists, so it wasn't so bad at first.  Then it started to get cold.  And the wind began to blow.  Then came the ropes, where you had to haul yourself over boulders.  There was a full moon out, which was sort of pretty, not that you could see anything.

See the little lights?  Those are the headlamps of the people behind us.   My only comfort was that we were ahead of all of those people.

After a couple of hours it started to flatten out a bit, and then we were there!  The summit!  There wasn't much room at the top, and more people were coming, so we had to take a quick pictures and scramble down off the little peak again.

Not to be un-appreciative of all this natural beauty, but it was freakin' freezing waiting for the sun to rise.  I wanted it to hurry up so we could get back down.

Woo hoo! The sun!

As we decided that we had officially seen the sun rise at 13,500 feel, we started to head back down.  I can't tell you how great it was to take my first steps that were not up.  And we could finally see all the stuff we missed on the way up. 

I practically skipped my way down to the next meeting place, about 45 minutes down the mountain, not quite halfway to base camp.  Next time - Via Ferrata, or, How Did I Get Talked Into This?

Mount Kinabalu 2010 - Stairway to Heaven

Climbing day dawned bright and clear.  I loaded up at the hotel on pancakes and peanut butter, and we headed out for the 90-minute drive to the national park at the base of Mt. Kinabalu.  The mountain got bigger as we got closer.  Yes, we're starting from down here and going way up there.

Waiting with us were several other groups of people, namely a large groups of Taiwanese tourists.  I helped take a few pictures of the group, and they were thoroughly entertained by my attempt at Mandarin.  "Yi, er, san!"  I counted.  I noticed that a lot of them were not wearing hiking shoes, some even wearing those slip-on canvas shoes.  Well, maybe David was right, I thought.  If they can do it...

Having carefully arranged our backpacks the night before, I was a little irritated that right before we headed onto the path they handed us a large cloth bag with our pre-packed lunch inside.  Where in the world was I supposed to put this?  I barely had enough room for my camera, let alone a plastic tupperware container the size of a cake pan.  So giving me another 15-minute reprieve, David opened up his bag and re-packed our lunch.  Okay, now we're ready.

It was a six-kilometer hike to base camp, with one planned rest stop at the 4-kilometer mark for lunch.  The first kilometer was deceptively easy, with even a couple of flat parts.  This might even be fun, I started thinking.

Then, the stairs started.

It's not so much that the stairs were really big, it was that they kept relentlessly going up.  And up.  And up.  There was never more than two or three paces of flat between hundreds of wooden stairs, rock and boulder stairs.

I never really saw David that much, he left me behind with Rony (our guide) most of the time.  Who seemed like a nice guy, but wasn't much of a conversationalist.  (This is pretty much David's MO, when he says he wants to do things like this "with me", he doesn't really mean "with" me, he just means he wants me there at the end to hang out with and have a celebration beer.)

There was a disappointing lack of wildlife along the way.  "Will we see any snakes?" I asked hopefully.  "Monkeys?"  "No, don't worry, just birds and squirrels."  "Oh."  There were some cool plants, though.  David, when he did wait for me, tried to engage me in a discussion of how some ferragated leaves were designed to maximize surface tension to hold the rain water.  I ignored him, instead pointing to the wild orchids and saying "Look, pretty flowers!."  The huge pitcher plants were the highlight.  Lots of dead bugs inside.

Stopping briefly at the 4K mark for a lunch of ham-and-cheese sandwiches and hard boiled eggs, we donned another layer and trudged on, as it was getting too cold to stop for long.  The first four kilometers took us two hours.  The last two kilometers?  Also two hours.  A blistering pace of one kilometer an hour.  I had even trained for this, that's how hard it was.

It doesn't look that bad?  Get on a Stairmaster.  Press start.  Now keep going for four hours.  Other people had paid local porters to haul their stuff up (extra water, warm clothes for the summit, etc.), and these guys blew by us at regular intervals.  One guy was hauling two propane tanks on his back, and he didn't even look winded.  I consoled myself with the thought that they must just be used to the altitude.  I took exactly one picture during the last two kilometers, concentrating only on going up one step at a time.

I cannot express in words how relieved I was to finally reach base camp.  Rest!  But hold on, you have to climb over a hundred more stairs to get to the bunk house.  My goal for the day was simply not to cry.  So far so good, but the climb wasn't over yet.

We staked our claim on our bunks, and then tried to keep warm while we waited for dinner.

After dinner, we pretty much just sat around eating granola bars and taking cloud pictures.  The clouds are pretty cool when you're above them.

The sun set around 8pm, and I headed into my sleeping bad to try to catch some sleep.  Unfortunately the big Singaporean group that was in the room next to us had decided to stay up the whole night in order to not feel worse when the 2am wake-up call came, so sleep was not to be had.  (I've heard that the loudest groups of people are the Italians and the Koreans, but Singaporeans have to be a close third.)

As I lay in my bunk with my headphones (Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, you think if anything that could put me to sleep) I tried to mentally prep myself for the next day.  How many layers should I wear?  Should I try to go hard and just get it over with, or a little slower and try to enjoy it just a little bit?  Is that old Japanese guy going to be faster than me?  Probably, those guys are hard core.  What's going to be for breakfast?  I hope it's not peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again.  Are there bathrooms that high up?  I'm hungry again already what if I didn't bring enough granola bars?  What if we have to walk behind these loud people the whole rest of the way?

I hear David get up at 1:30am to start to get ready, and then my 2:00am wake-up call arrives.  Here we go.