Hanging out at the Laban Rata Rest House
5pm at Laban Rata Resthouse (3272 m, 10,789 ft). It’s another 900 m (2970 ft) and 2.5 km to the summit from here, but we won’t be dealing with that bit until 2:30am tomorrow morning when we set out for Low’s Peak.
This morning I was at the park headquarters early to arrange for a guide, and wound up sharing the 60 RM ($25) guide fee with Masaki, another solo traveler from Japan. He’s from the town next to Mt. Fuji actually but has never climbed it (yet). Instead he’s here, in Sabah, for a one-week holiday to climb Kinabalu.
Anyway Masaki and I set out at 7:45am with our guide Tumas, a 25-year old Malay guy who’s climbed the mountain over 100 times in the last 5 years.
It was 6km from the park gate to this rest house, with an elevation gain of 1400 m (4620 ft). Pretty much a steady uphill the whole way, but with a very well maintained and graded trail it really wasn?t too bad. Took us 3 hours and 45 minutes.
We were here before noon which seemed very early to me to end a day of hiking. We considered pushing on and doing the summit today, but then I started to think it would be better to rest and acclimatize here for several hours first plus our chances of having any views will be better first thing in the morning at sunrise.
So it?s been a quiet afternoon at the rest house, enjoying the views and reading my book. There are about 100 other climbers here, I?d say about 60% Malay and 40% foreigners. Some of the Malay people have done the mountain several times already.
There are also a lot of Malay and foreign runners who are training for the annual Kinabalu Marathon which takes place this year on October 6th. Very humbling to be trudging up a mountain and have someone literally run right by you! I even saw 2 Malay women training? way to go ladies. Last year the men?s winner had a time of 2hr 18 min and the women?s had 3hr 08min. Incredible!
It?ll be a very early night tonight, resting up and saving energy for the summit bid tomorrow.
The Laban Rata Rest House, 3272 m
I earned that view!
Dont think I looked quite so happy when I woke up just a few hours later…must have been the altitude
Add comment September 21st, 2002