Mount Kinabalu

Mountain considered holy by the local people. It towers over everything here at 4,095 meters at the summit. The trail to the top is 8 km with a vertical climb of about 2,200 meters. That's more than 1 1/3 mile up. Or a 27.5% grade on average, triple the grade of a steep road. All that is to say that these old legs didn't make the summit. I got to the lodge at about 3200+ meters but couldn't make the final climb. I barely made it back down.
In the pictures, #1 is the whole mountain from a distance. #2 is a look at a small part of the trail to give an idea of the difficulty, and that isn't even the worst part. I was too drained, both physically and mentally, to think of pictures at that point. #3 is the climber's lodge where we stayed. The rest are various views from the the lodge and/or trail on the downward hike as it was raining during the hike up.Read more