Category:Travel
I’d like to say today’s photo is looking back to the summit of Mount Kinabalu but I can’t be sure it is.
In the cold morning air on the summit of Mount Kinabalu we watched the sun rise and the colors of morning change all around us. Two photos today. In the first
I think I left Laban Rata at 3:30 a.m. to head up to the summit of Mount Kinabalu. There was already a string of flashlights on the trail ahead of me and more behind me. I guess today the LED headlamp is de rigueur, and they certainly leaves your hands free but in 1989 they didn’t exist. I recall that when I was moving it was fine and when I stopped it was cold. I wasn’t well prepared for the […]
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.
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.
Laban Rata is pretty much at the altitude where the vegetation peters out and the base granite starts. The trek there is through the jungle/rainforest so it can be pretty warm and humid. Most of the climb that I recall was this seemingly endless zigzag of stairs cut into the side of the hill and shored up with wood or stone, without which the entire climb would be a muddy scramble.