Cool Head Warm Heart

There were 25 of us in the company wanted to climb Mt Kinabalu. So the Group Sports Club organizer had to split us in to 3 groups. The first group climbed the mountain in August. I joined the second group in September reaching the summit on 19 September 2010. This morning, 16 October, the third group reached the summit. They are probably reaching Kinabalu Park Head Quarter now and are arranging to come back to West Malaysia tonight.

5 out of 8 persons in the first group reached Low’s Peak, the summit. 7 out of 8 persons in our group made it to the peak too. For third group, I heard, 8 out of 9 of them made it to the top. The results are getting better as more information were provided by the earlier groups to the later group. Of course, the number of personal mountain guides, beside the 2 mountain guides assigned by the Park, had increase from 0 in first group, 1 in second group to 5 in third group.

Mt Kinabalu, or Gunung Kinabalu as called by Malay Language, is (arguably) the highest peak of South East Asia, at 4,095.2M or 13,435 ft above sea level.

For comparison, the highest mountain in United States, Mt Whitney in California is 4,418M or 14,494 feet, the highest mountain in Australia, Kosciusko is only 2,228M, and the highest mountain in Western Europe, Mont Blanc, is 4,807M. (Mt Everest is 8,850M) Click here for more info on highest mountains.

For people like my mom, who went to some mountains in China and think those mountains are high, the highest peak of the famous Huangshan (Chinese: 黄山, Yellow Mountain) in China is only 1,864M, highest peak of Hua Shan (Mt Hua) is only 2,160M. Without Tibet, Chinese mountains can hardly be considered as high.

So you get the idea, Mt Kinabalu is high, one of the very high in the world.

I added a new blog on my trip of climbing Mt Kinabalu to this web site. The photo of Timpohon trail to base camp, Laban Rata, the photo of Summit trail from base camp to Low’s Peak, and the highlight of the climb to Low’s Peak, the highest point of summit.