Thursday, August 2, 2007

Failed miserably......

Came down from Mount Kinabalu today. Everything was fine the 1st day. We were taking our time, not pushing ourselves and I was kinda enjoying the surroundings. Little do I know, bad things were to happen. Just after the 1KM mark(for those who are thinking "1KM only mar", let me remind you its not 1KM straight road.... Its steep ok...) I realized my pants had a hole a the you-know-where part. Luckily it was a small hole, but I had to try hard to do things slowly so that i don't make the hole bigger.

So all goes well, slowly we were progressing. Then, it started raining just after the 3/4 of the days journey mark and when it rains there, it's damn cold wei. The last 1/4 was really a struggle, strong winds, rain water and low temperature. For a moment I thought I was going to freeze to death. Luckily, we still made it to the destination for the day. Felt a bit dizzy and was shivering then but it was a big relief. Buffet dinner!!! yay!!! But the food quite lousy, RM 33 for normal "chap-fan" food. sigh.. but if I opted for ala-carte the price would be around there also, so might as well pay for the buffet and eat as much as I can.

After dinner, went down to our room/cabin. Wuish, the toilet is outside wan. Like those old chinese show punya toilet. Have to walk with torchlight to get there... some more in the middle of the mountain and jungle.... The room was ok, comfortable.... at first. We all slept as soon as we could, about 7 something because we needed to wake up at 2am to continue our journey to the peak(the 2am is so that we can make it for the sunrise). Everything was fine, until the room started to get colder... It became so cold, my legs were aching damn badly..... I was wearing 2 layers of pants with 2 of those hotel kind of blankets covering myself.... Still freezing.... Couldn't sleep well all the way till the alarm rang.

So the 2nd part of our climb started. Temperatures were as low as 8 degrees. I was wearing 3 layers of clothes, 3 layers of pants(1 short, 2 long) and a jacket with gloves.... Still can't block the cold.... zzzzz... But the 2nd part was quite ok, I think I felt better when compared to 1st part of the climb. The 2nd part is shorter in distance but then more challenging in the sense that you really need to climb at some parts.

Here comes another sad news, about 1/3 of the climb to the peak, there is this part where u have to use a rope to climb up a nearly 90 degrees wall. I couldn't do it.. I was afraid of heights, a lot of you know.... I can confirm it now. My legs just couldn't take me any further so I gave up. I felt sorry to Meng Tat and Chea Choon because both of them decided not to go on to the peak. REALLY SORRY!!!!

So we headed back down, to stop to have our breakfast. We reached just before it started to rain. It rained damn heavily and we were all freezing. Luckily we didn't go up to the peak after all. hahaha. After our breakfast, we checked out and started our journey down to the bottom. Now going down was much easier, but I was still taking things slowly. I didn't want to get injured or something.

Now... another sad news, just about after 1KM down. I slipped and sprained my ankle... Yes... again.... I couldn't walk all the way down. There was 5KM more to go..... So my guide decided to call for the stretcher. While waiting for the stretcher, my guide and another guide slowly helped me walk a bit by putting my arms on their shoulders. We went on for about another 0.5Km then the stretcher arrived.... The stretcher.... damn scary... When I was loaded on to the stretcher, they wrapped me up with those white belts. Looks like those mad people being tied up in the asylum only.... zzzz then 4 guys carried my down all the way. They swapped with another 4 people half-way. Those people are amazingly fast. I was down in no time. Did some paperwork then waited for Meng Tat and Chea Choon to come down.. Waited about 2 hours..

That's about it for the mountain trip.... I got a cert for reaching the 1st point of destination. A bit disappointed though. Really wanted to reach the peak and being carried down was not exactly my most proudest moment. Damn lot of people staring. sigh...

Thinks I've regretted :
1. Not training at all for the climb
2. Not being able to overcome my fear of heights
3. Did not prepare enough clothing and a proper jacket
4. Wasn't careful enough knowing my ankle is prone to injury

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