Mt. Kinabalu - Day 1 of the climb

It's finally time to head up the mountain for our 2 day climb to the summit of Mt. Kinabalu. At the mountain briefing the night before, we met this really nice guy, Parag, who was traveling on his own, and invited him to join us on our journey up the mountain. So here we all are at the Timpohan Gate, full of energy and excitement to start our trek.

Just at the bottom of the stairs from the main entrance, there was this beautiful waterfall (I have a bit of a waterfall obsession). I could tell this was going to be an amazing scenic hike already.

Not too far into the hike we started climbing up these really super steep stairs.

This was the first set of many to come... not too bad right now, still in good spirits and lots of energy.

The first rest stop of seven. That wasn't too bad, it only took us approximately 15 minutes to climb the first 1km. So why does it take the average person 4-6 hours to climb 6km? Well we were about to find out...

Here we are up into the cloud forest now. Along this hike, we passed through many different temperate zones. On the way up, we saw all the different types of plants changing with the rising altitude and climate.

These are pitcher plants. They have a sticky sweet sap inside to attract insects. Once the insects get inside they are stuck in the sap, if they are able to attempt to climb up the side of the plant, once they reach the top there are spikes pointing down into the centre which prevent it from getting out.


Almost there, only 1 km left to go until we reach the rest house for the night. So far we seem to making pretty good time, who knew how long the last 1km would take!

Having a bit of a rest as we are strugging with the drastic change in altitude and steep climb.

For me, the last 500m this first day was the hardest. It took me 50 minutes to climb the last 500m!! My head was hurting and I was starting to feel a bit faint from the altitude. We were really starting to slow down and run low on energy. So close, but so far away....

Here is the first sign of civilization. I got a bit excited, thinking that we were there, but to my surprise, we still had a bit of a trek to go.

Ahh finally there. It took us 5 hours to climb 6km from 1500m up to 3000m, leaving at 9am and arriving 2pm. The second day we will be waking up at 1:30 to have breakfast at 2am and leave by 2:30am for the 2km climb to get to the summit at 4096m, Lowe's Peak.

The view of the area below.