Borneo’s Kinabalu Climb 🧗♀️ What Happens Before the Summit Push
It is often said that preparation is everything. This, I find, is a wonderfully optimistic sentiment usually spouted by people whose biggest adventure that day involves finding the matching sock.
As for us? We had indeed prepared, arranging our assault on Mount Kinabalu six months in advance with Amazing Borneo Tours. They are veterans of the tourism arena in Sabah, having been doing this for over two decades. Which, frankly, should have been our first clue that this wouldn’t be a civilised stroll through the park.
Our chosen package was the full three-day, two-night theatrical production: the Kinabalu climb, a dabble with the Via Ferrata known as ‘Walk the Torq,’ and a brief sojourn in a highland resort. A complete package, mind you, including chauffeured service from our rather contrasting accommodations in Kota Kinabalu—the sensible Holiday Inn Express and the slightly more self-important Shangri-La Rasa Ria.
Highlights
- A Foreboding Breakfast Briefing ☕
- Transfer 🚌 to the Shy Mountain
- First Day’s Ascent to Basecamp
- Low’s Peak 🌑 2nd Day Ascent
- Our Kinabalu ⛰️ ‘Warm-Up’ Act 🧗♀️
- A Kinabalu Cartoon Extravaganza!
- Flights from KL to Kota Kinabalu
- All Hotel Deals in Kota Kinabalu
- Experiences 🌟 Not Sightseeing
- Our Complete Borneo Itinerary
- Essentials for Hiking
The Holiday Inn Express 🏨 Pre-Mountain Practicality
Checking into the Holiday Inn Express in Kota Kinabalu felt like the final, fleeting moment of urban sanity. It was clean, it was efficient, and it was entirely predictable—a soothing balm of corporate practicality before we voluntarily threw ourselves at a monumental piece of jagged rock.
We swiftly dumped our gear, took advantage of the complimentary capsule coffee machine, and attempted to relax, though the thought of the climb already sat like a small, heavy stone in our stomachs.
You see, due to leg and knee injuries in the previous months, neither of us had been able to put in the training demanded by this type of enterprise.
By the way, the Holiday Inn Express offers a clean, central, and exceedingly convenient stay in the vibrant heart of Kota Kinabalu, complete with a complimentary breakfast to get your day started without any fuss.
A Foreboding Breakfast Briefing ☕
The following morning we were enjoying a frankly superb breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express, trying to mentally prepare ourselves for hauling our bodies up a mountain, when an inquisitive chap interrupted our ingestion of scrambled eggs.
“Are you climbing Kinabalu?” he asked.
I was momentarily thrown. Was there a massive neon sign above us? Does this city offer nothing else of note to its visitors? It felt akin to asking someone standing next to a bus stop if they were perhaps considering a journey.
Still, it turns out this fellow, Darren, was a compatriot, a Brit who had successfully negotiated the mountain just the week prior. His tone, however, was less a boast of victory and more a cautionary tale delivered with the sobriety of a war veteran.
“It’s hard,” he declared, though he claimed, rather annoyingly, to have completed the first day’s climb in a mere three hours. We offered him a silent round of applause for his youthful vigour, whilst simultaneously planning to proceed at a pace only marginally faster than geological erosion.
Then came the grim specifics. His head torch, the one beacon of hope in the pre-dawn inky blackness, had given up the ghost on the second morning. Imagine the scene: alone, cold, marooned in the dark, clinging to a wet rope, and apparently, vocally expressing his displeasure in a manner strictly forbidden by the mountain’s stringent guidelines.
He admitted he’d been genuinely scared.
The summit itself sounded bleak: Rain, freezing wind, and wet gloves meant he could only endure four minutes at the peak—which, he proudly stated, was longer than anyone else he saw.
Four minutes.
That’s roughly the length of time you can endure a terrible pop song before changing the station.
It also took him longer to descend than it did to ascend. This, ladies and gentlemen, is known as a clue.
Our forecast for the following days was looking suspiciously damp: We found ourselves praying to the meteorological deities that our dash to the top wouldn’t be cancelled.
We’d meticulously arranged the planning; we wouldn’t be able to handle the anticlimax.
A Timely Transfer 🚌 to the Shy Mountain
Amazing Borneo, bless their operational efficiency, arrived at the pickup bang on time at 12:30 pm. A genuinely impressive start. There were only two other souls joining us in the minivan, making for a pleasantly calm journey.
We headed straight for Kinabalu Park, which sits at the mountain’s base.
The drive is roughly two hours, and about half an hour before arrival, the views started to become, well, spectacular. We saw the mountain looming, massive and grey.
Before checking into our accommodation—the charmingly named Pine Resort—we made a strategic pit stop. We stocked up on the essentials: water, bananas (for the potassium-fueled lies we’d tell ourselves), selak (a local snack), and nuts. The bungalow itself was a winner with a sturdy wooden terrace offering truly fabulous views.
“Jeez! It looks so high.”
From this viewpoint, it looked like a truly humungous lump of unforgiving granite. The peaks, evidently, were having a little lie-in, mostly shrouded by the rapidly drifting clouds.
They call it the shy mountain because it rarely reveals its full glory, except for the fleeting moments of dawn. It felt almost provocative, this hidden, enormous mass. Was that what we’d signed up to climb? We genuinely struggled to believe it.
Kinabalu Pine Resort 🛌 The Last Hurrah
Our cabin at Pine Resort was clean and comfortable. This booking thoughtfully included a set dinner and breakfast – fuel for the impending challenge.
Kinabalu from the Pine Resort
But let’s talk about the real essentials. From the resort’s shop we swiftly procured beer and wine for consumption on our balcony. It was, after all, going to be our final taste of the civilized world—and indeed, alcohol—for the next 48 hours.
One must maintain standards, mustn’t one?
Our ‘Special’ tea & juice, with nuts
The Pine Resort, sitting at a respectable 1,500 metres above sea level, would be the start of our short but vital 36-hour acclimatisation.
The set dinner at Kinabalu Pine Resort was a very satisfying selection of local dishes, with soup and plenty of fresh vegetables, accompanied by the excellent Sabah tea. It was all impeccably prepared and served.
Another tick for Amazing Borneo Tours.
Pine View Dinner
The next morning we were up at 6:30 am, the sound of the alarm a stark reminder of the task we’d signed up for. A quick breakfast, the obligatory re-packing—leaving all but the essential climbing gear at the headquarters—and we were off.
At 7:30 am, we played the necessary bureaucratic game: registering, signing indemnity forms (always a comforting exercise), receiving our climbing ID tags (the mountain’s equivalent of a wristband at a music festival), and finally meeting our personal guide, Winston.
We also, in a moment of sheer luck, belatedly procured some hiking poles. We would soon be offering silent, tearful thanks for these poles.
A quick drive whisked us up to the Timpohon Gate (1,800 metres), the literal starting line of the climb.
Lambs to the slaughter
First Day’s Ascent to Basecamp 🧗♀️
The route from the Timpohon Gate to the Panalaban Basecamp is 6 kilometres, but involves a punishing 1,600 metre gain in altitude. That, for the mathematically challenged amongst us, is steep.
A slope of 6 kilometers horizontal distance with a 1.5 kilometers vertical incline is extremely steep, translating to a 25% grade (angle of incline ). This is considered challenging even for experienced hikers.
The expected duration of this climb is a generous, anxiety-inducing bracket of four to eight hours.
We started out looking like sensible hikers: thin shirts and pullovers. This lasted approximately seventeen minutes. We then swiftly stripped down to just our shirts, and within half an hour, we were soaking in our own exertion. This was November, the so-called off-season, yet the temperature was decidedly warm at this altitude.
The first kilometre was manageable, almost civilised. We made solid progress, feeling a smidgen of false confidence. This, naturally, was the mountain’s cruel trick. Beyond this initial pleasantry, the climb grew steadily steeper, punctuated by sections that were genuinely challenging.
Just another 6 KM (and 1,645 KM up)
We maintained a steady, non-heroic pace, stopping intermittently to practice our heavy-breathing exercises.
At roughly the 4-kilometre mark, Winston stopped us for a packed lunch and a twenty-minute ceasefire. We happily obliged, sharing our meal with the very friendly mountain squirrels.
This is where the steps, the last vestiges of human-friendly engineering, disappear. They are replaced by a bewildering, ankle-snapping trail of beige-coloured, jumbled rocks. The ascent transformed from a hike into an undignified scramble. Climbing over these uneven, often 2-foot tall obstacles slowed us down to an absolute crawl.
We found ourselves having to use our hands as well as our feet. It also started to rain.
Heading up to Basecamp
The whole time, we were constantly passed by the unsung heroes of the mountain: the porters. These magnificent individuals were nimbly descending and ascending, carrying HUGE loads on their backs. And there we were, whimpering about the weight of our paltry 5-kilogram backpacks. It put our own struggle into hilariously stark perspective.
We even witnessed the legend, the Mount Kinabalu ‘taxi’ in action: a porter carrying a distinctly heavy, fully grown climber piggyback down the mountain. Winston informed us this service was “very” expensive. One can only imagine the zero count on that particular bill.
When your legs turn to the consistency of aerated jelly, this is the only way down. A rather humbling, wallet-emptying, truth.
As we neared the end, the final kilometre – as logic dictated – was the most brutal. It comprised never-ending, impossibly steep ascents that felt less like climbing and more like punishment.
The intermittent rain turned the affair into a constant, frantic dance of donning and removing our flimsy, lightweight raincoats. The sheer faffing of it all was exhausting.
We finally dragged ourselves to the Panalaban Basecamp around 3:30 pm, a reasonably respectable six hours after we began.
1,500 Metres Higher & 2,000 Calories Lighter 🤯 The Basecamp Effect
How were we feeling after this 6-kilometre, 1,500-metre vertical slog?
Not too bad, surprisingly. No immediate cramps, no piercing pain, just a profound sense of tiredness. We were now at 3,200 metres above sea level, significantly higher than most sensible people venture. And yes, a substantial 2,000 calories lighter, which gave us brief, shallow satisfaction.
Panalaban Basecamp – Day 1 target? ✔️ (tick)
The day’s climbing wasn’t quite over, of course. We still had a bit of an uphill jaunt to reach our accommodation: the Pendant Hut. This particular edifice is reserved exclusively for the truly ambitious, the ones attempting the ‘Walk the Torq’ Via Ferrata.
We felt instantly superior to the Laban Rata commoners.
The Zen of Winston 🚶 Guide Walking Techniques
Winston, our guide, offered by example a silent, masterclass in mountain efficiency. He, like nearly all the local guides and porters, eschewed traditional hiking boots, opting instead for what appeared to be robust, enclosed slip-on rubber sandals. An utterly baffling footwear choice to our novice sensibilities.
Winston does this twice a week (no big deal)
His walking technique was a thing of minimalist beauty:
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Uphill: Slow and easy, with short, almost imperceptible pauses between each step. No wasted motion. It was like watching a snail in a hurry.
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Downhill: He never stepped forwards. Always sideways, a left-right shuffle that expertly took the crippling pressure off the front of the feet.
We vowed to remember this, though we were already far too sweaty and self-absorbed to implement any new techniques.
Pendant Hut 🛖 Our Exclusive Dormitory
The Pendant Hut is precisely what you’d expect: small, clean, and tidy. It boasts a reception, a dining area, and two dormitories, each capable of housing eight souls. Tonight, in a lucky twist of fate, we were the only guests. We had the whole place to ourselves—a private room, essentially, only with eight beds and the distinct scent of damp mountaineer.
Pendant Hut – View from window
The initial task on arrival was the signing of even more indemnity forms. Seriously, how many times do they need us to confirm we understand that climbing mountains can be fatal? Following this ritual, we received a briefing on the following day’s schedule. It sounded frankly exhausting.
We then had to walk back downhill (the cheek of it) to the Laban Rata Resthouse for our evening meal.
This, I must stress, was a truly banging buffet dinner. A glorious selection of proper, tasty, carbohydrate-heavy dishes:
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Mushroom soup (surprisingly restorative)
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Spag Bol (a comfort food revelation)
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Beef stew (proper hearty fare)
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Mashed potatoes (pure, calorific bliss)
I surprised myself with the sheer, unapologetic hunger I felt.
Post-feast, we trudged back up to Pendant Hut to attempt the elusive act of sleep before the ungodly early start.
Our private dorm meant peace, and each bed was equipped with proper sheets, a pillow, and a gloriously warm, high-quality sleeping bag. Downstairs was a cold water shower, an amenity we firmly decided to ignore. Why invite misery?
Pendant Hut Dormitory
At 3,200 metres, despite the unheated hut, the temperature was a manageable 10 to 15 degrees, though the staff were all sensibly bundled up like they were attempting to survive an Arctic expedition.
We were in bed by 8 pm, alarms set for the utterly inhumane hour of 01:15 am. Just enough time for a bit of packing and a token breakfast.
Sleep, naturally, was fleeting. There were flashes of lightning in the night—no rain, thankfully—but the combination of altitude and anxiety ensured we didn’t get much kip.
Tomorrow morning’s climb
Early tomorrow morning we’d attempt our summit push to Low’s Peak.
In just a few short hours, the only way is up.
This story continues with Low’s Peak 🌑 2nd Day Ascent, coming up next…
If you enjoyed our Borneo Kinabalu Climb, take a look at our other Tropical Travel Plans. You may also like:
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