As the sun continued is rise into the morning sky, the light levels were rapidly increasing and I took this shot in a southerly direction from the summit of Mount Kinabalu.
You'll see it's quite similar to the shot I posted a couple of days back, but you can see the surface now and the sign I alluded to in the lower left corner.
The sign and the white tape serve to inform and guard against a casual but rapid inadvertent descent into Low's Gully, at the end of which, you'd likely be a casualty!
Certainly the morning is chasing out the remnants of the night as the granodiorite plateau comes more fully into view.
As I recall, I waited until there were no wayward trekkers in sight to take this shot. Pretty much in the center of the frame you can see a dark line heading across the plateau to what is seemingly the edge of the mountain. This is the trail back to Laban Rata. If I recall correctly, there were some people already descending and others not yet arrived hidden in the shadow of the boulders in the foreground.
While it was cold, I still couldn't then and can't now understand why people were leaving so quickly. Six to nine hours of climbing over two days for less than 30 minutes at the top? Perhaps they had altitude sickness – not unheard of on this mountain – and they needed to head down to ease the headaches. Altitude sickness generally occurs at elevations above 2,400 m (8,000 ft) so at 4,095 m (13,435 ft) the summit of Mount Kinabalu qualifies near the lower bound of Very High Altitude.
Because of the decreasing density of the air, the amount of oxygen in the arterial blood falls below the 90% of saturation level which gives rise to the symptoms. Since most people start off at sea level only 36 hours before reaching the summit the ascent can be pretty rapid with no real time for acclimatisation.
Still, I wasn't so affected and I determined with two other climbers to spend some time exploring the plateau before heading back. As I mentioned before, this was in the age before guides were obligatory.
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