Mount Kinabalu is Slippery, Slippery

"Both of my ankles no longer function."
"I have no left knee."
"If I was a dog, my hind legs would be a wheelbarrow."

The climb up Mount Kinabalu on Borneo was the toughest thing we've ever done.

It started at 6:30 AM at base camp, which was already over 1,000 m above sea level. We had spent the night there after a bumpy bus ride that weaved back and forth up the side of the mountain for five hours. We had met some Polish travellers who were about our age and agreed that the five of us would make the hike together. Tomaz, Raddock and Weronika (with a "W" and a "K'" but still pronounced like the one in Archie's Double Digest) assured us that they were also novice climbers and were looking forward to a leisurly climb. We attended the climb briefing with them and listened intently as they described a lot of important stuff, most importantly, the certificates up for grabs. You got a beautiful colour version with pictures if you made it to the top. There was a black and white version if you made it to the evening rest stop (Laban Rata). There was also a third version available immediately if you simply wanted to commemorate your visit to Kinabalu National Park (read: if you failed). The one truly important thing that they hammered home was the importance of listening to everything your guide tells you. The guide would be an expert on the mountain and would help us avoid danger - especially at the summit.

Once all our waivers were gladly signed, we were introduced to our guide Wilfred. He was a local and looked to be in his late teens. He also looked slightly out of shape. This seemed strange, especially considering the abundance of human tanks that dotted the registration area. (Many of these men and women were porters - definitely one of the roughest jobs around. They sometimes do the mountain twice in a day, with up to 30 kgs on their backs. True story: we received a report of one of them carrying down a washing machine on his back the day we did the climb - this was validated by two sources.)

We set out through the gates and immediately started peppering Wilfred with questions - everyone was excited. "Hey Wilfred, how many times have you been up the mountain?". He smiled broadly, which made his eyes pinch shut. It was a playful look. Was he being coy? Maybe we were supposed to guess. "3o? 40 times?" Still just the frozen smile. Wilfred wasn't playing. It was suddenly and alarmingly obvious that Wilfred didn't speak a single word of English. In fact, he didn't seem to know that his name - in English anyway - was Wilfred.

The path was initially very obviously plotted and we set off along it with Wilfred behind us. Our next challenge was the Polish Three. Overnight, they had morphed from timid, first-time climbers into a pack of fully kitted-out mountaineers. Apparently they had done some mountains before - but all inside of Poland, so they didn't really count (according to them). Raddock worked his GPS while Weronika closely monitored our heart rates on her mountain watch. This became a concern as she started refusing breaks on the basis of her watch's opinion. Early on, we didn't get along with the watch.

Over the course of the day, we fell back and all but lost the Poles up the mountain. We also lost Wilfred from time to time. At one point, we came around a turn to find him passed out on his back at the side of the trail. We assumed that his extreme relaxation indicated a safe passage ahead and walked on without waking him. As we got higher and higher, the vegetation began to change. Boulders, dirt, clay, jungle, barren sheet-rock landscapes (reminding us of the Burren in Galway, which our guide on that tour called a "lunar suface" but pronounced "surface" with three syllables so that it rhymed with "orifice").

We survived the first day and spent a cold, brief night at Laban Rata. At 1:30 AM (yes, AM) the next morning, we left the hut and wobbled down the steps like it was Thursday night at the Cocomo. Raddock and Tomaz where there. Where was Weronika? Turns out she wasn't feeling well and was opting out of the hike to the peak. Maybe pushed it a bit too hard yesterday? Ouch! Bet the watch didn't predict that one! Oh well, the black and white cert looked nice.

Still at the hut, I noticed that other guides had their groups in huddles. They were briefing the climbers on the terrain and weather conditions. The were answering questions and double-checking gear. The were motivating their groups, firing them up for the task at hand. I looked at Wilfred. "Briefing?". Nothing. "Are we going to have a briefing?" One of the other guides heard and said something in Malay to Wilfred. Wilfred thought about this and then conferred with the other guide for a few more minutes. Then he turned back to me and spoke. "Today..." Yes! Here it comes. I'm hanging on every word buddy! "....slippery, slippery". After leaving what I thought was an appropriate pause for consideration, I said "Yes". Then we stood in silence for a few minutes, both feeling the full weight of his vivid description of the day ahead. Eventually I threw him the thumbs up and we silently agreed that whatever happened, we would not be caught off-guard by anything - and I mean ANYTHING! - that was slippery, slippery.

We climbed in the dark for hours. Sometimes wooden stairs with shaky banisters, sometimes dirt paths or piles of rocks and sometimes near vertical sheets of grey rock that we pulled ourselves across using ropes that we bolted into the mountainside.

We snacked on a peanut-raisin-chocolate mix we'd prepared until we could not longer stand the taste. We started taking breaks every few minutes. Laura had some system of twenty steps and then a twenty second break, but I just shuffled then fell whenever it felt right. Near the end, you would think we'd be focused on reaching the top and celebrating a job well done. But during the last hour of intense exhaustion, all I was thinking about was the trip back down. How every step up would need to be retraced in reverse - and this time all in one day. So while Day 1 was 6 km up, Day 2 was an additional 2 km up then the full 8 km back down. When you round that last corner and see the peak, it begins to look suspiciously like the starting line, instead of the finishing line you were hoping for.

And then we were upon it. The peak itself was tiny - almost coming to a point and we spent the first few minutes jockeying for positing with the other climbers and taking the obligatory photo with the "Lowe's Peak" sign. Then the sun nudged up in the distance and the whole mountain turned purple, then pink and eventually a warm orange. There was some cloud cover, but we could see as far as we'd ever seen - enough to make the knees wobble a bit and remind us how high we were (4,095 m to be precise). Around us, the other climbers were all crouching low, feeling the same thing and looking for handholds. All the cameras came out and got workouts that rivalled our own.

The way down was all the same work with none of the anticipation or payoff. It was easier on the muscles but far more painful on the ankle and knee joints. We stopped back at the mid-point for a nap and were later woken by Wilfred (we were glad to see that he had survived) who apparently had a deadline to meet at the base camp.

At some point along the route down (about five hours) we gathered that the bus we were leaving on had an earlier departure time than we were told. The last two hours was basically a race down the mountain on legs that only had two speeds: jelly and locked-at-the-knee. Around 3:15 PM we Frankenstein-lurched to the base, grabbed our bags and colour certificates (yes!) and ran (mmm...kind of) down a hill to a bus stop outside of the park. Ten minutes later we were on the last bus to Sandakan.