Conquered Mt. Kinabalu: The Journey – Day 1

So here’s my little travel log of my journey to the peak of Mt. Kinabalu…

Pre-Day 1

• Arrived Kinabalu Park at about 5 PM from Kota Kinabalu on a mini-bus (van) en-route to Ranau which took us about 2 hours
• Check-in at our Chalet and have a short walk around the park
• Attended a briefing for tomorrow’s big climb by a park ranger

Day 1

• Had breakfast and packed our lunch from Kinabalu Park’s cafe
• Checked-in with the Kinabalu Park’s reception and assigned to our guide
• Depart on a bus to the starting point at Timpohon Gate. It’s quite a distance from the Kinabalu Park’s reception area, highly recommended to take the bus and save your energy for the actual ascent instead.
• 10 AM : Begin our ascent up Mount Kinabalu from Timpohon Gate



• The journey begins with some easy downhill walk (which I’ll talk about it later) till a nice little waterfall to mark the beginning of a 6km of never-ending path of stairs up Mount Kinabalu



• The vegetations along the way changes as the altitude increase. From the lush dense tropical rainforest to the alpine trees and little scrub plants as we get higher up Mount Kinabalu
• About every kilometer along the journey, there’s little huts to rest and refill our bottles with fresh mountain water (untreated water, but its save to drink – I had a few refills myself)



• The last 2km of the climb before arriving at Laban Rata is quite tough, big steep steps of rocks. I practically took a break approximately every 20m of the climb, arriving at the 500m checkpoints along the path seems like quite far apart (There’s markings every 0.5km along the path to indicate our progress)




• 5 PM : Finally, the sight of Laban Rata… a very welcomed sight after the tiring hike up



• Took a nice heated shower and dinner. Lights out at about 8 PM, and had a well deserved rest before the final ascent up to the peak of Mount Kinabalu at 2 AM