When you read about the Mt Kinabalu climb, it sounds quite accessible. Sometimes it's described with that exact word. You walk, say the books, for six hours uphill; then you sleep in the hut-settlement of Laban Rata till 1am; then you walk uphill for another two hours, and then you're at the highest point of South-East Asia. In time for sunrise, too.
Let me tell you something. They don't really mean "walk for six hours uphill". You don't walk, you climb, foot after foot, rock by rock, for almost the entire six hours. And it's not uphill. It's just straight up the side of the mountain. Tumbled sandstones and, later, granite boulders provide traction, but it's just vertical step after vertical step, on and on and on. It can take the best part of an hour to cover 200m; we were astonished to complete the 6km inside six hours.
When you pass the halfway marker the track is still a pretty familiar clay forest path. It's cool under the trees, ferns and vines fill the forest, and there's very little wildlife - all just like New Zealand. Large steps are cut into the track, and just like in New Zealand, the steps are too large to use without exhausting yourself. We quickly learned to minimise the vertical height of each step we took by using rocks and tree roots as intermediate steps. In this way we proceeded reasonably quickly to the lunch stop, a shelter named Layang Layang just below the 4km marker. On the face of it, we were 2/3 done.
It was those last 2km where things got gnarly. The clay path with steps was replaced by a long stream of tumbled boulders. Sometimes it was possible to traverse over a boulder using footholds, but other times it was impossible to avoid taking too large a step in order to reach the next section. An unhappy rhythm formed: small step, small step, small step, giant step, rest. Small step, small step, small step, giant step, rest. Each rest left us feeling a little worse than the previous one. It took us four hours to do the last 2km. I was in tears by the time we reached Laban Rata, and even Gregory was looking shellshocked when we finally sat down at Pendant Hut.
Amazingly, it took only two cups of sugary tea and a biscuit before we started to feel human again. The majestic slope of the mountain rising outside the window was suddenly a source of interest, not horror. Our fellow climbers were people to talk to, not incomprehensibly fit demi-gods. Best of all, dinner was coming, and in the morning we are promised two breakfasts (one each side of the summit). The prospect of summitting was still exciting, despite my genuine doubts about my fitness, and our local guide thought we could probably make it even after a whole day spent trailing us at snail's pace.
So what went wrong with our expectations? We forgot that this new mountain is unlikely to be like New Zealand. At home we have ample opportunity to walk for six hours uphill on bush tracks, but they do nothing to prepare you for the vertical flow of boulders we have here. At home, once you leave the treeline, you're mostly in ice and probably know what you're doing. Here it's too warm for ice, and a whole different set of challenges lie in wait beyond that too-accessible treeline. At home, huts are seldom more than four hours apart, creating a range of possible long and short walking legs. On Kinabalu you have no option - six hours of climbing, or you're out.
We made it through the six hours of climbing, so we're not out. And tomorrow we still plan to stand on the top of Borneo. Our expectations for tomorrow afternoon are pretty realistic, too, now - we're going to emerge from Timpohon Gate dead on our feet, and spend the next 24 hours, hopefully, off our feet entirely.
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