So here’s the last of the Mount Kinabalu sunset series.
The sun has now slipped below the horizon, it’s passing marked by the display of yellow, orange and red in the sky. Running pretty much through the middle of the photo is the coast of Sabah with the city of Kota Kinabalu in the center, invisible through the haze.
You can make out the islands of Pulau Gaya and the three smaller islands including Pulau Manukan on the right half of the image and the hills of the Crocker Range between Mount Kinabalu and the coast.
The sun would have set a little after 6:00 pm. After observing that spectacle there was little point in hanging around outside. It was time to head back inside the resthouse at Laban Rata, grab a drink, get everything arranged for the next morning and go to sleep.
The aim for most people hiking to the summit is to be on the summit to watch the sun rise which is a little after 6:00 am. This means leaving the resthouse at around 3:00 am and climbing through the dark.
After hiking from the Park HQ to the Timpohon Gate and then climbing the staircase to Laban Rata, I had little difficulty falling asleep.
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Here’s the third in my series of four sunset images from Laban Rata, Mount Kinabalu, taken during my trek up the mountain in August 1989.
What struck me as the sun descended was the it seemed to set twice – as though there were parallel horizons. That’s most evident in the photo below. My only guess here is that I’m above some form of atmospheric boundary. If you look at the two previous photos, here and here, you can clearly see an atmospheric haze below me. My thought here is that the top horizon is that atmospheric boundary and the lower horizon, the one providing the flat line beneath the sun is the ocean.
The reds, yellows and oranges are reflected off the clouds higher in the atmosphere. It’s as though the lower layer of the atmosphere is acting as a wave guide.
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As I mentioned yesterday, I’m posting a series of four shots of the sunset I took from Laban Rata on Mount Kinabalu.
Today’s is a tighter shot. The sun is already descending below the horizon and appears distorted because of atmospheric refraction.
In the mid-ground you can clearly make out the coastline at Kota Kinabalu, some 37 miles (60 km) distant from Laban Rata. The haze is too strong to make out the features of the town but the airport lies just to the left of the promontory in the middle of the photo. On the promontory sits the Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort and Spa where I would be relaxing less than 24 hours later.
On the right of the photo you can see the southern shore of Pulau Gaya and to its south (left in the photo) Pulau Manukan and its two close un-named (on Google Earth) islands.
Yesterday I posted an image of a fellow trekker photographing the sunset from Laban Rata on Mount Kinabalu.
Below is the first of a series of four that I’ll post over the remainder of the week of that sunset. I don’t recall which lenses I carried on that trip but this is obviously a telephoto shot.
In this shot, the sun hangs just above the horizon of the South China Sea. About a quarter of the way up the frame you can make out the coast at Kota Kinabalu which is 37 miles (60 km) distant from where I was on Mount Kinabalu at Laban Rata.
I particularly like the way the haze from the humidity hanging over the lowland jungle is dispersing the red end of the light spectrum in this shot while the cloud-free upper atmosphere is turning lilac. The spectrum is almost separated like a rainbow, indeed on the right of the frame there’s a hint of green in the upper bands of yellow.
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In the photo below a fellow traveler is capturing the sun setting into the South China Sea as we watched from the helipad at Laban Rata.
The humidity hangs in the valleys in a purple haze. Just below the sun you can make out the coastline. It was strange for me to think that 48 hours previously I’d been at sea level in Miri, Sarawak and now here I was at 11,000 feet watching the sun descend.
With the sun continuing to descend in the west, I headed back to Laban Rata.
Most of the other hikers were in the resthouse but a few of us hung around outside to watch the sun go down. Today’s photo was a view south, over the top of the Park HQ and deeper into Borneo.
I’ve always found standing on firm ground and looking down on the tops of clouds to be kind of weird. Expected from within an aircraft but weird from terra firma.
The last rays of the sun are picking out the branches of the trees in the foreground while a haze develops over the hills and valleys of the interior of Borneo. In the middle ground it looks as though the air currents are bending the clouds to the shape of the hills and valleys and there’s just a hint of green remaining on the west facing hillsides that are still catching the rays from the sun. I recall it was breezy and chilly, standing out there on the mountainside but I found the scene so spectacular and, knowing I’d likely never return, I wanted to savor the experience.
Over the next several days I’ll post some of the sunset shots I captured from Laban Rata. My next stop was going to be Hong Kong so I had no worries about having to conserve film. What a difference technology makes. I currently use a 32 Gb card in my 5D Mark II that captures over 1,000 images or the equivalent of over 28 rolls of film!
Having recovered somewhat from the effort of climbing from the Park HQ to Laban Rata I decided to take a stroll.
The typical tourist trek to the summit of Mount Kinabalu is to hike from the Park HQ to Laban Rata on the morning of Day 1, then rest up and acclimatise for the trek to the summit on Day 2. The goal is to be on the summit to watch the sun rise which typically means leaving Laban Rata and climbing through the darkness. Of course, climb here = trek. The well work route requires no technical climbing gear nor technical climbing skills.
I decided I’d proceed up the mountain for another 30 minutes to get a feel for what was ahead and then return to Laban Rata for the evening. Today you have to have overnight accommodations booked before you even leave on the ascent from the Timpohon Gate but I don’t recall the climb being so regulated back in 1989.
On the trail above Laban Rata I took this image as the sun dipped lower in the sky. You might be able to make out part of the trail, climbing at a slight diagonal from about mid-way up the right hand side of the image towards the notch in the center of the image. If you click on the image it takes you over to my Smugmug site where you can view a larger image. Just to the left of the notch you can make out a sign that pointed the way to the summit for the way up and Laban Rata for the way down.
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The Laban Rata Resthouse was my destination for day one.
As you can see from the shadows in the photo below, I got there early in the afternoon. I think the large gravel expanse I’m standing on to take this photo was a helipad.
While water is pumped up, everything else is carried up by porters. I imagine a helicopter was used to ferry materials for the construction of the rest house such as the cable drum – that was not carried up by man or woman power!
I’ve not been able to find out when the hut was built but I don’t think it had been there very many years by 1989, though I might be wrong.
I had just rocked up a the Park HQ and booked and paid for my meals and bed the day before but now I read you need to buy some form of package deal and you can’t start the climb up the mountain without showing you have overnight accommodation reserved.
At the Laban Rata Resthouse I was able to buy a hot meal and I recall I slept in a bunk bed in a dorm. I also secured a hot breakfast in the morning. As a mountain hut with all supplies ported up by people, I was quite impressed with both the food and the accommodations. But there’s no hot water for showers, just icy cold water. Ice cold showers aren’t really my thing, never have been.
The climb had taken about five or six hours so in the afternoon I just vegged, taking in the views, chatting with other trekkers. I was a little concerned with the cloud moving in from the north west but it drifted away as the afternoon wore on.
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Thursday, February 28, 2013
It was quite a relief to emerge from the trees and arrive at Laban Rata.
The angle of the path reduced and the stairway gave way to a gravel path. I arrived early in the afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky and there wasn’t a cloud in front of me. There would have been plenty of time to go on to the summit before nightfall, but not enough to have returned back to Laban Rata and, as you can see, there’s no shelter at all up on the rocks and I had no tent. I didn’t even have gloves or a hat!
After all, at this point I was at about 11,000 ft with about another 2,500 ft more to go for the summit. Having come from sea level in about 24 hours, that’s quite a climate change.
Some of the other trekkers I’d tagged onto walked on up the trail a little further but they returned shortly after to rest up at the guesthouse.
You notice it from the Park HQ but up close, the transition from vegetation cover to bare rock is quite stark. As with yesterday’s photo, the notch between the peaks was also evident when viewed from the Park HQ.
This photo is a great example of why I loved Fujichrome slide films. This one is on ISO 100 Provia (Later the ISO 50 Velvia became my slide film of choice). I just loved the saturated greens and blues.
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by Richard Davis