Other than the joy of reaching the top of Mt Kinabalu again after 18 years, and wonder at the magnificent sceneries from the top, the other feeling that is still vivid in my mind about the climb was of my toes!On the early morning as we were getting ready to do the final assault on Mt Kinabalu, I decided to exchange shoes with my girl, who at that point of time, had a flare-up of her eczema on the soles of her feet so she was in bandages. As such, I exchanged my shoes which were one size bigger than hers as otherwise her shoes will be too tight for her. Her shoes fitted me a bit too snugly with my socks on but I thought it was ok.
However, we were not even an hour into the climb when she was all teary-eyed, wanting to go back down to 11,000 ft to be with the other kids, all of whom had to stay back at Gunting Lagadan due to various reasons. As she was not suffering from high altitude sickness like some of the other kids, I thought she should make it a try. When she found she was the only child going up on that night she felt that I was ‘torturing’ her by insisting that she made the effort. After nearly half an hour of whining that she was also not feeling well, I decided I had enough of motivating her, so I got one of the guides to take her back down. At that point of time, I didn’t have the foresight of changing back to my own shoes, which proved to the bane of me!
For most of the climb up, I was ok with the shoes although it was a tight fit. However, after the jubilation over the reaching the peak and the mandatory group photo-taking and we were making our way down, the pain started to hit me. Because the shoes were tight and there was hardly any extra room for my toes, it meant that when I was heading down (really down, all the way!), my toes and nails were just pushing onto the very front of the shoes (and the worst thing was, I forgot to cut my nails!). The pressure on my nails and toes was so painful that I resorted to trying to walk with just my socks, but then it was also not possible because the plateau surface was jagged and therefore painful to walk without shoes. So I walked with shoes on, shoes off until at 13,000 ft, the uneven terrain made it totally impossible for me to walk with just my socks and I had to bear with the shoes. From then until we reached down to 11,000 ft, I had to bear with the immense pain and I was practically whining and shouting in turns, ".... pain, pain, ooh, my toes...", nearly all the way down – much to the amusement of Xin Lei and Chung Weng, who were with me most of the time on the way down. I was so glad when we finally reached 11,000 ft and I could change back to my Teva sandals. (God bless my faithful Teva!). The sad thing was, because of the pain, I did not bother to sto
p and take any pictures of our descent from 13,000 – 11,000 ft. :-( I was feeling rather stupid because during my last climb up Mt Kinabalu, I was facing exactly the same problem – also pain on the way down due to tight-fitting shoes with hardly any toe-box and ended up losing the nails from my two big toes!
This was the exact reason why I insisted on wearing my Teva sandals instead of normal trekking shoes for the climb this time - I wanted the open room for my toes and yet, at the crucial part of the climb, this very thought of having enough room at the toe-box just flew out of the window. And guess what? I ended up losing the nails of my two big toes - again! Talk about not learning a lesson…..
Top right pic: Walking into the clouds
Top left pic: At 13,000 ft, down, down, down. Terrain definitely not suitable for the shoe-less. ;-)
Bottom right pic: My family & I with our faithful Tevas
(Note: It is not possible to wear the Teva sandal on the final assault because of the very cold weather. I brought along the covered shoes for the final climb only.)
VL
March 2009
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