mountains, knee aches, near tragedies, and ex everton football stars!!

THE MOUNTAIN
we both climbed the bugger - all 4095 meters of it, and boy was it tough
we started off at 8am from 1880 meters heading up to the basecamp at about 3300 meters, this was quite tough at first but once we got the rhythm going, we mananged to do it in just under 4 hours which was pretty good
then after a cold night in our little tin shack and some super noodles for brekky we headed off at 3AM (yes, 3 AM!!) to try and get to the summit for sunrise. After a tough start we got caught up behind a slow group which actually was a real blessing cos we slowed our pace right down, and it actually meant we got all the way to the top without stopping really. Once past the intitial steps you are on pure rock face, some of it at 45 degress - you have to pull youself up with ropes - and we made it the summit to see the sunrise over the hills which then exposed all the massive rock faces we had just walked over - absolutely stunning!!

CLOSE SCRAPE
on the way down we witnessed a near tragedy , a lad behind us had tripped on one of the convex hills and took a fall for about 20 meters - these hills get steeper and steeper and he was so lucky not to go all the way down, i think he hit a rock or a shrub and that probabally saved his life. His head was all bashed and his leg a bit battered but it looked like he didn;t break anything. Anyway he had to get stretched all the way down by the guides, who in my opinion should enter the worlds strongest man comptetition - someof them carry 40K gas canisters up the mountain, crazy!

ARGGGGGGGHHHHH
we though the decent would be easy, but 2000m down in one day was too much for our poor little legs - we could hardly walk at the bottom - justine was walking like she had had 10 pints, and each step i took resulted with a large groan - painful!

GUESS WHO WE SAW???
bloody Neville southall! at our hotel. He was climbing the mountain for charity, with Alan Kennedy and a few other footballers. Couldn't believe it - i was just reading the Borneo Daily Express about the world cup, looked up and thought - i recognise that bloke! couldn;t believe it. I spoke to another guy there who was with him, but i was far too shy to do the photograph thing

my actual plan was to go the bar and mingle (there was no one else there), but we couldn't afford a drink cos we only had our bus fare back to KK - how gutting was that! and if we'd left semporna 2 days later, we could have climed the mountain with big Nev! gutted, that would have been class
i did suggest to Justine that we could do the mountian again.............