"But Everest you can take days over"

The greatest phone call I've ever made would have to be the one I made yesterday morning to tell my family Gregory and I had just got engaged. We were on descent, about 30 minutes below the summit, when we stopped to rest on a shallow granite slope just above Sayat Sayat checkpoint. With the morning sun shining and the little fields and houses of Sabah spread out at our feet, we decided now was as good a time as any to make the calls. Mt Kinabalu has excellent cellphone reception, even at the summit. My mum was excited, wanted to see the ring; Gregory's dad texted "glad you both got altitude sickness together".

That was about the last bright point of the day. Gregory's sparkly rock on my finger definitely made for a distraction from the hellish descent, but nothing could have made it any easier.

It took us from 2.30 till 9.30am to make the round trip from Pendant Hut to the summit and back. By the time we got back to the hut we felt as if we'd done a full day of climbing already, which we had. It wasn't easy climbing either - there were ropes and steep faces, hundreds of steps, and large boulder piles to ascend hand over hand. Our toes were sore from being rammed into the front of our shoes, and our ankles were sore from balancing. We were glad we'd bailed on the via ferrata - although the locals are very proud of it, we were too tired to try it (and see Gregory's post for his concerns about the safety briefing).

There was little time to rest. After a cooked breakfast at the hut we toasted our engagement with arak (Sarawak rice spirit), stocked up on chocolate at the Laban Rata store, and started on the remainder of the descent around 11.30am.

We limped out of Timpohon Gate just before 5.30pm. Six kilometers in six hours - the same speed we had made going up. Because we were already fatigued, coming down was even harder. This was made worse by my idea that it would be easier below Layang Layang - but that only applies when you're going up - while stepping up thousands of steps is tiring, it's way easier than stepping down them.

Well before halfway we were seriously struggling. Our knees were too sore to take the steps properly, so we were going down crabwise, one step at a time. Our bruised toes made every step painful. My ankles and calves were too weak to balance, forcing me to grip the handrail with both hands to avoid falling. In the state we were in, it was a miracle that neither of us did fall and hurt ourselves.

We weren't the only people struggling. Apart from the local guides and porters, almost every climber we saw that day was in distress, from the summit to the exit. Fitness levels had nothing to do with it, nor nutrition, nor clothing; it was just that the task was too much for the majority of people up there. People were suffering on that mountain because it can't safely be climbed the way the tourist operators want you to climb it.

I don't know why they promote this two-day round trip, but it's madness. No one but the true mountaineers should be trying to descend on the same day they summit. To make the mountain accessible to the reasonably fit tourist - which is what they seem to want to do - the operators should instead be promoting an "in your own time" approach.

At the very minimum a standard trip should include two nights at Laban Rata with a daylight summit attempt in the middle. The 2.30am start for the summit is just exhausting people and making the trip more dangerous, and without the pressure to descend on the same day, it's unnecessary. Laban Rata has the infrastructure to handle many people at leisure - store, restaurant, books and games - and it would make so much more sense to have people relaxing there after they come down from the summit. Having them pack up and walk out immediately is dangerous and dumb.

One other thing I'd add to the standard package is a night at Kinabalu Park HQ after the descent. It's hard to know how necessary this would be if you'd taken the descent at a reasonable pace, but with our sore knees and ankles, we definitely didn't want to get straight in a van for the two-hour drive back to KK. If we'd booked in at the HQ we would have been able to go straight to sleep, and someone making better time would have had the option of exploring the trails around the base of the mountain, which look very inviting.

Mt Kinabalu should be a tourist attraction on par with Yosemite National Park, but the way they're selling it makes it a hazard up there with Aoraki. I got the title of this post from two fit climbers who passed us on descent, discussing whether Kinabalu is made harder than Everest by the schedule. This is madness; I say enough.