Having posted some photos a few days back looking up towards the summit of Mount Kinabalu from the resthouse at Laban Rata, today's photo is the reverse – looking down on Laban Rata from among the peaks of the summit plateau.
The Laban Rata resthouse is the small, bent, yellow structure on the vertical centerline about one fifth the way up the image. Just above and to the right of the resthouse is the helipad from where I took the sunset photos the night before.
I'm trying to place myself on the mountain. If you look at my Laban Rata photo, vertically above the center of the three upper windows is a small notch between two peaks. I'm of the opinion that for today's photo, I'm in that notch.
It's about two hours after sunrise – around 8:00 a.m. The sunlight is harder, the shadows have a harder edge to them. The cloud below seems to have lifted as there are fewer ridges from the Crocker Range poking through.
A few hours after I took this photo I'd be passing by Laban Rata then following the trail over past the radio antennas to the right and on down the staircase to the Timpohon Gate and off down the road that I can just make out on the hillside leading on to the Park HQ which I can also make out in this photo as a series of light spots on a forested ridge on the right of the photo in open sunlight. It all seemed so surreal at the time and even more so now.
Of course, the wide angle view makes these distances seem greater than they really are. From where I am taking this photo to the Park HQ is about 4.5 miles (7.5 km) in a straight line. The Laban Rata reshouse is a little less than a mile away in a straight line.
