Climbing Mt K – Before: The Homework

We’ve never been to East Malaysia and since the tickets were so cheap, we thought it was a great chance to go. We decided on Kota Kinabalu and thought since we’re already there we could go up Mt Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia (not going into the Mt-K-is-NOT-the-highest-mountain-in-SEA debate, though it is very interesting). We’d only be there for four days so we made two rough plans – Plan A (budget-friendly), visiting attractions in Sabah; Plan B (more expensive), climb Mt K and if we have time, visit some places.

Before looking up info, we naively thought Mt K would not be hard, maybe an activity we can work into our schedules. So we happily chose Plan B…and then found out it takes HOURS to ascend and descend the mountain, with an overnight stay midway. *Gulp* We had underestimated the mountain and now felt intimidated by it, so much so that we considered taking the easy way out and not climb it. But a small voice inside us was not convinced, so we said oh what the heck, we've had friends who'd succeeded, why not try it ourselves?

There are lots of excellent sites on climbing Mt Kinabalu. Some of the ones I find really useful:
Wiki Travel - Mt Kinabalu
Travel Malaysia Guide - Mt Kinabalu
http://www.climbmtkinabalu.com/index.html

A map will make this much easier to understand:

The typical advice would be to secure a place at Laban Rata before booking your air ticket. We did this the other way round because we bought our tickets 9 months before the climb. We ended up going with a packaged tour because I was lazy and didn't secure beds until 2 months before our climb, and ended up costing us quite a lot.

Anyway, we started training ourselves 3 months before the climb. We ran stairs, did hikes up Penang Hill, Youth Park and Tokun Dam. I also cycled, ran treadmills and did lots of stretching and half squats.

For packing tips, we followed the suggestions listed on the websites and tried to keep our luggage light.