Mt Kinabalu Expedition - Day Two Part One

*Finally, after more than a month, I can upload photos to Blogger again! Goodbye Error 400! The upload time's a little slow, but it's all good~*

Setting my sights on the goal.

But only after a hearty breakfast, which I regretted. Before strenuous activity, never eat until stuffed.

Somewhere around the restaurant.

One of our guides, the one who brought me down from Hell in the Sky.

All freshfaced and clean before our climb. Just prior to taking that photo, I was trying to open my tube of deep heat rub to warm up my legs. The seal was stuck very tightly, so I used my teeth to pull it off.

Yeap, it squirted into my mouth.

Spitting and rinsing straight after couldn't get all of it out, so for the next 30 minutes I had a very strong minty feeling in my mouth.

The start of the Mesilau trail. Comparable to the part of Gunung Nuang that's right after Camp Two. Easy jungle trekking as it's practically like walking up a badly made flight of stairs.

The Mesilau route is about 2km longer than the Timpohon route. However, I'll definitely take that way up again as it's very much more scenic than Timpohon and less tiring in a sense that Timpohon is uphill all the way while Mesilau has some descents.

However, I won't take Mesilau down the mountain as I think it's harder to descent Mesilau than ascent and vice versa with Timpohon, as Mesilau has certain areas which can get quite hard to scramble down rather than climb up.

Darren @ KM0.5

It's so depressing seeing the first 4 markers.

After walking for what seems like hours the marker announces that you've only gone 500 meters.

Not fun.

Especially not when it's only your second ever climb, you know you've a lot more distance to cover and you're lugging a 7 kg backpack (without hipstraps or proper padding I might add).


But the view is magnificent and worth all the sweat, pain and mental torture.


See, easy trail. By the way, that's one of the porters behind Mei Yee, carrying about 25-30kg worth of stuff in a gunny sack.

At KM2.5, with 6 more to go before Laban Rata and a hot shower, or so I thought.

Oh, see that stick on my left? That's the "walking stick" I got for only RM3 from the Kinabalu Park van driver. A much needed bargain. Much needed to take some weight off my knees and a bargain because that's the price from years ago. It's been reported that people are selling the walking sticks for up to RM10, RM5 being the basic now.

*Disclaimer: Not all the photos are mine. Most are from the other climbers.