I had always wanted to go climbing Mount Kinabalu, the tallest peak in Southest Asia. A couples of things had hampered me to proceed, like gathering a group of hikers, availability and etc. 

Just so happened that a friend of mine needed a replacement for his group as someone withdrew herself. I was kind of tied up to work at the time, but I just carried on joining them to conquer the mount. It was just a week prior to the climb that I got informed about the replacement, and my leave was approved right the day before the climb. 

Things were happening swiftly. I didn't make much preparation, didn't go on any kind of stamina training, plus I didn't really take with me all the the items/gears which would come in handy during the adventure, reason being that I wasn't really thinking about the climb which would otherwise turn out to be a huge challenge. 

The climb was tough, which yields a big satisfaction. We started off climbing up thru the Mesilau Trail, which is about 8km in length. As we proceeded half way, the weather turned on us. It's pouring. The rocky trail became a mini waterfall, and we kept going up, as the day was getting darker and darker. We had to reach the rest point by 6pm. We were drenched wet and the ambient temperature was like 5 deg C. My feet were like ice-bathed and got kind of frostbitten. Thanks to the strong mental, I reached there, the first in my group, and swearing all my way through. Bearing all the exhaustion and suffering the spasm, I just kept going on. Come to think about it, it's definitely one of the toughest things I had ever done in my life.

Had a buffet dinner, got some rest, and got up at 2am the next day, the rain hadn't yet stopped, but it did at 2.30am. We started climbing uphill again to the peak. It's wet and freezing cold, about 3 deg C and the air was thin. We had got another perhaps 4 km to complete to be at the low peak. It took such a huge efforts just to make a few more steps. I thought few steps away was already far. That's how exhausted I was. We did make it to the top slightly pass 6am. Sun was a little up already. The view was magnificent. All the hardship paid off, although we were still suffering the extreme coldness.  

The climbers. We didn't come here camping. We climbed to the peak.

Whatever, I've what I wanted to do since long. Great achievement, great experience. Hope to have another adventure similar to this again soon.