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.
Having hung around at the summit till there were only a few of us left I was torn at going back down the mountain so soon. Was this all there was? Surely not! But then again, folks that get to the top of Everest only get to spend 15 minutes or so on the top of the world before heading down and that's after they've spent weeks, or months even, on the ascent!. Maybe that's why I'm not a mountaineer – I tend to enjoy the destination as well as the journey, and sometimes more so.
Again, my jaunt to the summit of Mount Kinabalu was in 1989 and before the mandatory guide era so I don't know what choice you have to linger these days.
I found a Norwegian and an Italian that similarly didn't want to descend right away and together we determined to spend up to a couple of hours wandering the summit plateau and visiting some of the other peaks.
This photo shows the Italian climber taking a similar photo to mine. The white tape to his left clues me in that this is likely the summit. The white tape is there basically to warn people to keep to the left of it. Less necessary in bright, cloudless, daylight like this but a welcome friend in the pre-dawn darkness or if cloud moves in on the summit. There's quite a drop off to the right of my Italian friend that would not be obvious in poor visibility. In such conditions the white tape will alert you to the hazard.
The granodiorite that forms the summit of Mount Kinabalu is an intrusive igneous rock. That means that it basically pushed its way up as a hot, molten lava into the overlying sedimentary layers before cooling and hardening. Over the following eons the surrounding seimentary rocks were eroded away leaving the harder igneous rock exposed. While the rock has obviously weathered over the millenia, the structures to the right of the peak certainly still show signs of having been a fluid at some point in their past.
As with all onOne products, you'll get a 30-day moneyback guarantee, world class technical support, and free online training including Live webinars and videos to get you up and running fast!
