Mount KK Trip

I wrote this short report about my KK Trip in my DiveTrek website and decided to put it here as well.

This trip was one with mixed feelings. Well, we enjoyed ourselves in many ways like roaming the town, shopping, eating, staying at nice resorts, trekking through beautiful scenery, conquering the summit etc, but I guess for some of us, the extremely cold weather while going up to the summit was a big MINUS!

Ours was a relaxed trip compared to the other group (Ernest was in the other group). Theirs was a 6 day trip while ours lasted 9 days. So we had a lot of time to relax before and after the trek. We spent the first two days roaming KK Town, doing some window shopping, exploring the corners of the town, finding out accommodation for the remaining of the trip and looking for nice foods to eat. The local hawker centre near to the sea serves lots of barbecued seafood. We nearly tried the BBQed trigger fish!

One interesting thing we did the second night was to "lay an ambush" at the airport for Ernest's group to arrive. Besides Bee Leng and I, the rest of my group did not know that Lip was joining us a day late. Lip made some last minute arrangements and finally managed to get her leave approved, air ticket booked and bag packed in the last minute. We made a simple vanguard sheet to welcome the group coming out of the departure hall. It was a pleasant surprise for most of us.

Ernest's group "chionged" to KK Park to stay the night while my group continue to relax in the town. For them, they trekked up the mountain via the Mesilau trail to the base camp the next morning and stayed the night at Gunting Lagadan Hut. They rested for that evening and conquered the summit early next morning. They then proceeded all the way down the mountain via the Timpohon trail and stayed the night at Poring Hot Springs Resort. They then returned to Singapore the following evening.

After leaving KK town (we had roasted duck, char siew and wanton noodles for breakfast), we proceeded to stay the night at Mesilau Resort (after settling administrative matters at the KK Park HQ). The resort, situated at about 2000m above sea level was nice and the air was cooling. We had some nice meals at the restaurant, including steamboat in the evening. We also had a fruits feast (consisting of mangosteens, langsat, rambutans, jambu, bananas, oranges and tomatoes bought from a roadside fruit market along the way) that night.

After an early breakfast, some warm up and a briefing by our guide, we set off on the Mesilau trail. The Mesilau trail is more scenic but longer than the Timpohon trail. Indeed the trail was quite nice as compared to the other trips I had gone so far. The trail is more open and most of the time, instead of trekking under shady boring trees, we were able to see many nice scenery along the way. There was one part where we stood on a ridge with deep valleys on both sides. It was cooling and sunny at the same time, and the feeling was good. We were hoping to meet Ernest and his gang at the intersection of the Mesilau and Timpohon trail, but guess they were too early for us.

We took our time to complete the trail. By the time we arrived at base camp accommodation for the night(Waras Hut), it was like 9 hours have passed since we started early in the morning. I guess our speed was a little slow but we took a lot of photos and rest along the way, contributing to the long hours. Nevertheless, we were glad to have reached our accommodation, as most of us were hungry, tired and cold by then. We had dinner at the main lodging restaurant (Laban Rata Hut) which served basic food like noodles, rice, bee hoon, soups and spaghetti. We had our fill and retired early for the night.

As we were in no hurry to conquer the summit, we slept in a little bit. After checking out and had our late breakfast, we proceeded to check in at our next accommodation for the night - Gunting Lagadan Hut (where Ernest and gang were the night before and a short stroll from Waras Hut). Some rested in the room while some (including me) laid on the rock outside the hut gazing at the clouds floating by. My face is like Justice Bao now because of that short 2-hour tan! The clouds hovering around the mountain were very beautiful. They looked like candy floss and you wished you could stick your hand out and pull some to your mouth. Those clouds above us kept changing patterns too, due to the strong wind. It is one of the nicest mountain treks for me so far.

We had the usual simple dinner and sat outside the hut to relax for a while. The night scene was beautiful too. Suddenly as we shielded our eyes from the bright lamp that was just in front of the hut, and looked up to the sky, we realised that it was flooded with stars. We took many pictures and then proceeded to rest early, as we had to wake up at 1 am the next morning to begin our ascent to the summit. I guess all of us managed to catch an hour or two of rest before the alarm sounded all too early. We had a quick simple meal of instant noodles and milo. We were all very excited and revving to go, even though I sort of had butterflies in the stomach. After a short warm up, we were the first group to go up the steps towards the summit. The sky was very dark and the stars were smiling down on us. They seemed very near and within our hands' reach. But we had no time to talk to the stars as the summit was on our minds.

Soon many other groups passed us. As usual, we were slow and steady and was trying to enjoy the night trek in the cool morning. We were quite warmly dressed up with long johns, T-shirst, sweaters and jackets. I think most of us had at least 5 layers on. I found out later Lip wore 8 layers! We soon cleared the 700+ steps and came to the part where we had to clear some wall face with the help of the rope. It was easy and fun for me. In fact for most parts, you don't really need the rope. Anyway, clearing the wall face in the dark was not that exciting, as we were not able to see what was beside us. We were told by those who have been there before that coming down was more fun, because we could see the "danger" we were in. Anyway, up and up we went.

Ooops, "Is it raining?" Oh yes, it started to drizzle. We were ascending up into the clouds and the wind was picking up. Wow, it was getting cold and visibility at one point dropped to a mere 5 m! Even with our powerful torchlights, we could only see a few metres ahead. The wind was very strong that there were quite a few instances when we were almost blown off our feet. We were soon soaking wet. Somehow I wonder why we did not don our raincoats. Perhaps we thought it was a passing cloud and that our windbreakers would be able to hold out the rain. But we were wrong. Within the next hour, we were all shivering and teeth were chattering. The climb had begun to be tough. We slowly made our way up, taking more frequent rests due to the cold and the thin air. All we see ahead were distant torchlights of other groups. Soon we could see the final part of the mountain slope that would bring us to the summit. But each step we took was agonising as it was freezing cold.

Nevertheless we pushed on. Some of us contemplated to turn back, but I am glad we did not. We dragged our heavy feet and our weak shivering bodies, and slowly made our way bit by bit up the granite rock face. We saw many people passed by us but they were going in the opposite direction. Yes, they had gone up to the summit and are hurriedly going down to keep themselves out from the cold. We were still struggling. Hey, we are about 100 m from the summit.......jia you....I shouted.....Yes, the summit was in sight. Our objective is just ahead. We could see it clearly. We could even smell it. But we could not touch it. The last 100 m was not easy, but knowing that the summit is nigh pushed us on. We scrambled onto the last rock and finally we hugged and kissed the signboard that says "Taman Kinabalu Low's Peak (4095.2 m)". Yeah, we have finally made it to the summit. We snapped a few quick photos and quickly descended from the summit.

The journey down the hill took much shorter time but no less grueling. While the rain had stopped, the wind was still blowing continuously and we were soaking wet inside. I still remember my teeth were chattering throughout and I nearly went into spasms. But we survived and were finally back in our accommodation! We took a while to defrost, rest and change. We had a quick lunch and were soon ready for our long descent. Our guide, having seen our pace so far, was worried that we would take too long even in the descent. But we prove him wrong and by 5 pm we were already down at the Timpohon gate, 2 hours faster than expected. We have to pat our own backs for that.

We waited for our van to pick us up, went over to the KK Park to collect our certificates and soon we were on our way to Poring Hot Springs Resort. It is situated at a nice quiet place next to a running river. Surprisingly, it was very warm that night, perhaps to compensate for the cold we suffered in the morning. We gave Edwin a surprised birthday celebration at our room after dinner. We originally planned to do it at the summit but there was no way we could light the candles then. HA. So it was a double celebration for Edwin - conquering the summit for the second time, this time on his birthday.

After breakfast at a local coffee shop (nice curry noodles), we took a walk into the woods to check out the world's largest flower - the rafflesia. It was already in its 6th day of bloom and was almost going to wither. As such, the color was not very appealing, but at least we had a chance to catch a glimpse of how it looked like. We then checked out from the resort, but proceeded to check out the canopy walk after leaving our luggage at the resort reception. What?! More climbing? We had to walk upslope for about 30 minutes to reach the canopy walk and some of us were mumbling adn grumbling to ourselves. But the walk was well worth it as the canopy walk turned out to be very nice. It had a length of about 157m and at the highest point, it was about 41 m. The canopy walk is divided into 3 sections, with each end built on the platform on top of giant solid trees called the King of Trees (Raja Kayu). I tested its hardness by banging my head on the tree trunk. It was really hard. I am not called crazyjarjar for nothing. HA. The canopy walk posed a challenge to Lip, but as always, she emerged triumphant and managed to do some "dance" on the walk at the end.

From Poring we proceeded back to KK Town. Edwin left that night while the remaining 6 of us stayed back to explore the town. It was a tiring two days as the town was actually quite small. We contemplated to do a 5-island cruise but scrapped the idea because we wanted more time to rest our tired bodies. We ended up just shopping and eating. Lip was our champion shopper, as usual :p

I believe we were all glad to be back home, after a long and tiring KK trip. We penned down our feelings of the trip in a little blue notebook where all the happenings during the trip were recorded in detail. So if you ask me why I said I have mixed feelings about the trip, I guess the main reason would be that the weather during the ascent to the summit was bad, and that sort of spoilt all the fun as I could not take any pictures at all. We could not celebrate Edwin’s birthday at the summit and take a proper group photo with our banner which we had painstakingly drawn up for ourselves. If the weather had been good, I am sure I would have somersaulted and jumped from rock to rock on the mountain slopes. We would have nice pictures and memories of the mountain. I don’t plan to go back up the mountain again, but it looks like I might have to make another trip, just to take those pictures.

Anyway, overall it was a great trip. The group trained together before the trip and conquered the mountain together. I want to congratulate ourselves for being one of the few millions who have conquered that mountain. While it is not a comparable conquest like those who conquered Everest, I am sure it was a great achievement for us, especially those who have conquered the summit for the very first time. If you have not been there, I would highly recommend you to make a trip there. Oh, just make sure you go in the drier months (Jan to Jun) but no guarantees though.

Everest awaits………hahaha…just kidding.