The Peace Correspondent (27 page)

Going downhill is a hell of a way to start a mountain climb. Some 30 hours from now, after climbing a mountain almost as high as Mont Blanc in the French Alps, I will have to struggle back up this steep gully in sadder shape than I am now.

The skreeching, skrawking, whistles and rustles of the jungle around Mt. Kinabalu Park headquarters cabins give way to twittering bird songs greeting the pale dawn light. Half asleep, I haul my cameras, a few chocolate bars and a packet of cold, greasy rice to the warden's office to arrange for a guide. A smoke-belching pickup drops Benati, a frail. yet fit and silent Kadazan, and me at the power station at the foot of the mountain. From here, the trail dips down into a riverbed before steeply zigzagging up the mountainside.

Last year 10,378 climbers attempted the peak located some 90 kilometers east of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah's capital. Some 1,749 failed to make it to the top -- something to contemplate as I stumble up the rough, irregular trail. Ankle-turning rocks and twisted roots snaking through the thick, lush primary rain forest at the base of the mountain make the going hard. Already, I am puffing like an ancient steam engine while my guide follows effortlessly like a silent wraith, contemplating the Kadazan spirits that inhabit the top of the sacred mountain.

All morning, with many rest stops, I struggle up the forest path dappled with light filtering through the tall trees, over ground covered with tree roots like veins on an old, brown hand. I climb up rickety staircases with bamboo banisters and along a ridge of mossy forest with giant, trees dripping Tarzan-like vines, hanging orchids, lianas and ferns.

When my rasping breath quietens, the only sounds on the lonesome trail are the drowsy buzzing of flies and unseen little forest animals scuttling through the underbrush. We stop to suck water from a break in the plastic pipe running down the hill. Steam rises from the damp jungle in the burning mid-morning sun. My sticky-hot, sweat-soaked T-shirt turns chilly in a sudden
breeze. Old Benati waits patiently until the tuan, the white master, can resume the climb.

I wonder at the strange appeal of mountains that attract even un-athletic, non-outdoors types. I have climbed Japan's sacred Fuji-san, Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro and Australia's Ayers Rock, and hiked hills in the Andes, the Himalayas, Papua/New Guinea and northern Thailand's border with Burma, where hill tribesman in strange costumes still cultivate the poppy which ends up in North America and Europe as heroin.

The thick jungle gives way to oaks (some 30 species), then a cloud forest of smaller, moss-covered trees, ferns, bamboo, rhododendron and evil, hungry insectivorous pitcher plants. Somewhere grow rarely seen Raffelesia, the world's largest blossoms.

The jagged peak we aspire to bears the name of one Hugh Low, the first to ascend the mountain, in 1858. Today, a mixed collection of climbers stops for a break in a clearing at Carson's Camp as cool, wet mists begin to blot out the sun: a group of laughing Malaysian high school students that scampered up the mountain with ease; stern German hikers (“You must not stop too long. You must continue now.”); and intense, well-equipped Japanese.

Japanese are well turned out in mountain gear even for the six-hour hike up their own Mt. Fuji. Japanese tradition says a wise man climbs Mt. Fuji, only a fool climbs it twice. The one time I climbed it, I joined them on one of five ant-like trails leading up the volcanic mountainside, the pilgrim/climbers stopping at each station to get its mark seared into their walking sticks. Some reach the peak in the evening, some stay overnight in mountain huts and climb the last few hours in the dark, but they all gather at the peak to greet the rising sun, (as all we Kinabalu climbers hope to do tomorrow).

As I pause for a break, a small group comes up the trail behind me: a slightly paunchy lepidopterist from the University of Rome (if he can make it, I certainly can) and several members of the Brunei branch of the Hash House Harriers, those strange folk who race through the jungles following trails that inevitably lead
to a beer truck.

The cold mist pushes me up the mountain, so at 2 p.m. I break through the gnarled trees of the alpine terrain to a slight rock face and the rest hut, Panar Laban, the place of sacrifice. I am so exhausted I can't even climb the short flight of stairs to the hut without stopping to rest -- but I have made it on day one, right on time according to the park climbing schedule. Decades of marathon-runner-like carbo-loading on spaghetti and beer have paid off in endurance.

Inside the bare, basic hut the Harriers and the Italian moth man, all there long before me, are stretched out on the plank bunks snoring. The Malaysian school kids romp around with odious vigor. I collapse on the bunk in a thin, rented sleeping bag. But the night is not near as cold as in the shack high on Kilimanjaro where I was perhaps the most ill-equipped climber ever: socks for gloves, a blanket over my shoulders and a towel draped on my head like on an Egyptian pharoah's. The Sierra Club American group I joined, with their expensive L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer mountain gear, seemed to resent the outsider who made it to the top in street shoes.

At 3 a.m., climbers and guides stumbling around in the inadequate light of a soot-blackened kerosene lamp startle me to resentful wakefulness. After a breakfast of a packet of sugar from the Kota Kinabalu Hyatt and an icy tin cup of water, I set off in the blackness up the steep, twisted path behind the hut.

It is even worse than yesterday, the path so steep through the dense dwarf forest that in places we pull ourselves up by our hands along man-made ladders and natural staircases of Leptospermum roots. The full moon and occasional bright stabs from Benati's flashlight light the way. The only sounds now are the shallow, quick panting of climbers trying to suck in more oxygen-thin air.

At 4:30 a.m., Benati and I break out of the stunted forest. Pinpoints of light far ahead and above show the other climbers. We traverse a bare rock face, clutching thick ropes strung along and
attached to metal rings in the rock for support, to reach Sayat Sayat, the last huts on the mountain where the others are resting.

The bare, pointed peaks loom ahead like a monstrous, multi-nippled breast. Walking is easy on the smooth rock, following cairns and piles of rocks, but progress is slow at this altitude. Even the guides stop frequently to gasp for breath. Altitude sickness begins to hit some of us, causing sharp headaches, nausea, shortness of breath. One of the Hashers stops to throw up, the hack-hacking carrying far in the cool, thin air. “I can't go any further,” he groans, retches, then plods on. But eventually, this man who runs for recreation, has to give up, defeated more by altitude sickness than fatigue.

The light of the silvery moon bathes the stark, sheer peaks around us: the Ugly Sisters, Donkey Ears and, high ahead, Low's Peak.

An agonizing, chest-searing, throat-parching hour later I finally scramble up those giant boulders to plop down on the peak, panting, beside the signs and banners of previous climbers. The overweight Roman bug professor has been there for more than half an hour. We all sign the summit book. Then, right on cue, whoever arranges such things has the giant red sun rise like a bloodshot eyeball over the granite cliff to the east to glare at our shivering, jubilant group. Slowly, the rays light the jagged peaks and the valleys far, far below. Absolute silence. An awesome, otherworldly beauty and peace.

Resting atop the peak for the descent, I recall other times, other peaks; Japan's Fuji-san, 12,388 feet, where dawn-greeting Champagne -- even cheap Japanese Champagne -- blows its cork even more at that altitude; celebrating atop Gilman's Peak, three hard days up 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro, with mini-bottles of airline brandy. Today, the total serenity is disturbed only by the thought of the painful five-mile, six-hour hike down to a hot shower and cold beer.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, alone 29,028
feet atop Mt. Everest in 1953, could not have felt more fulfilled.

Postscript

While the climb is possible for anyone moderately fit, it is still not a walk in the park. Kinabalu has claimed nine lives since the park opened. Each year, a team of some 20 rangers deal with a number of minor injuries and accidents, usually of climbers with scrapes, broken bones or overcome with exhaustion and altitude sickness, although there are more serious cases.

A few years after I climbed, in 1987, when five climbers were scaling the mountain, three went ahead, while the leader stayed back with the slowest member. Very soon, the weather changed, as it often does on the mountain, and visibility was reduced to almost zero for three days. The two lagging behind disappeared and although rangers looked for them for a month, they never found the men.

Another case, the most famous rescue ever on the mountain, made international news headlines. Ten British and Hong Kong soldiers attempted in February, 1994, to become the first to descend Low's Gully. Five became trapped on the towering cliffs. More than two weeks after the expedition began, the other five climbers stumbled out of the gully and raised the alarm. Park rangers, the Malaysian army and a British mountain rescue team all joined the hunt.

Nine days later, the stranded climbers were spotted and winched to safety aboard a helicopter. They had attempted to abseil down the notorious Low's Gully, a mile-deep cleft down one side of the mountain. A month later they had to be rescued, having apparently survived the last week with no food other than mints. Their story was made into a movie, In the Place of the Dead.

In August, 2001, Ellie James, a 16-year-old girl from Cornwall, England, got separated from her group on a descent during bad weather. A search and rescue team found her body a week later. Local guides feared “spirits” had lured her astray.

I'M afraid Jalan, my Iban guide, is going to have a heart attack when he almost steps on a slithery, prehistoric monster. And he is a descendant of headhunters. I'm just a city dweller, and I'm sure I'll have a cardiac arrest when the huge, startled monitor lizard crashes through the underbrush just feet in front of us. Jalan has never encountered one of these saurian eyesores so close up, even though he is from the area.

This is Sarawak, wild land of hornbills, headhunters and tattooed ladies. The unusual, the outlandish and the just plain bizarre are commonplace in this Malaysian state on the north coast of the island of Borneo. Oddities include comical orangutans, flabby-nosed proboscis monkeys, flying lizards, bearded pigs, squirrels with wings, insectivorous pitcher plants, the world's largest flower, the Rafflesia, with blossoms a yard wide, and rhinoceros hornbills (birds) with huge beaks and colorful “helmets.”

With its more than 26 indigenous ethnic groups plus a variety of newcomers, Sarawak has its human oddities as well. Once, it was a land of marauding pirates and tattooed headhunters whose most distinctive interior decorating item was a string of human skulls hanging from the rafters of their longhouses. Instead of merely applying lipstick and eye makeup, the women of some interior tribes tattoo themselves from neck to knee.

Three-quarters of Sarawak, Malaysia's largest state, is mountains covered by the world's oldest rainforest, much of it protected in national parks and reserves. Rivers penetrating the interior,
where most inhabitants still live in distinctive communal longhouses, serve as highways.

Borneo makes its first impression on me right at Kuching airport, with its warm, tropical vegetation smell, like overripe fruit, and the rich, sweet perfume of the local clove cigarettes. Kuching, the state capital of low-rise shophouses, austere mosques and elaborate, colorful Hindu and Chinese temples, remains one of Southeast Asia's most charming cities.

But even the city still borders on the wild. The day I arrive, I witness a big orange bundle of fur swinging through the trees high above, like a hairy Tarzan on steroids. With tremendous agility, speed and power, the long-armed orangutan (“man of the jungle” in Malay) scrambles from branch to branch, vine to vine, in the jungle canopy at the Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, just 30 kilometers from the city center.