Sunrise on top of South East Asia

At the very last minute one of the venturers on our adventure phase dropped out of climbing Mount Kinabalu (highest mountain in south east asia - 4095m) so I ignored everyone who said I was crazy and volunteered myself to do it instead.

The climb up to base camp 'Laban Rata' took about 5 hours of gruelling climbing up steps through rainforest, then jungle, then very barren land. We reached the hut at about 6.30 pm and had a massive dinner before heading early to bed in tiny little bunk beds. It was freezing cold as we were already at about 3000 metres. Very strange to feel the sensation of being cold having lived in the tropics for the last 3 months! It was actually lovely to get into bed and get into my sleeping bag and wrap myself in a blanket to keep warm rather than getting into bed and being far too hot to sleep.

Anyway, sleep was shortlived as we were woken at 2am and we set off walking at 2.30am. We all had our headtorches on and walked for about 3 hours to reach the summit for sunrise. The first hour or so was steps and the next 2 hours was really steep granite slopes which we had to pull ourselves up with a rope. Several people got really bad altitude sickness so didn't make it to the top. I had a bad headache but I think that was more to do with tiredness rather than altitude.

Reaching the top was the most amazing experience. We sat on the top of south east asia and watched the most perfect sunrise and the views were breathtaking. Emms - I kept thinking of you and Mark getting engaged up there, what a beautiful place, and how great to have so many exciting things to talk about on the long hike down!

Several of the boys did the obligatory stripping off and posing on the summit and of course all the welsh and scottish people had brought their flags up to have photos at the top (why do they always do that?). It was actually quite emotional reaching the top - I'm not quite sure why but it felt like I'd achieved something really great reaching the top and yet it was quite humbling to be somewhere so naturally beautiful (Mums I just felt like you when I wrote that!).

I had been so focussed on reaching the top, that I hadn't really thought about what it would be like to come down. It was about 7 hours of coming down first granite slopes and then steps and it absolutely murdered my legs. I'd done a bit of a schoolboy thing and not cut my toenails and so they dug into the front of my walking boots - they're now looking black and I think they might fall off. I think the pain was comparable to about miles 15-20 in the marathon, but not half as bad as miles 20-26. But it was beautiful walking down through all the different landscapes and through the clouds.

So I've now done 2 of my 3 big things I wanted to do - climb a mountain, run a marathon and the last one is sail an ocean, which will definitely have to wait until another year and lots more money.

After reaching the bottom we headed off on the bus to 'changeover' when all the groups swap round again. It was great to catch up with everybody and to hear all the gossip (the latest count is that there are 3 staff couples now, and far too many venturer couples to keep count - Henry and Nicky I kept thinking of you as I was watching the couples saying their emotional goodbyes as they headed off on new phases!).

I'm now back at fieldbase for the last 3 weeks of the expedition. I'm going to be really busy as I've got to organise opening ceremonies with the press for several of our project sites, write design and publish the end of expedition magazine, get together a CD of all of the photos, get end of expedition t-shirts printed, send out numerous press releases about each of the projects we've done, and compile lots of case studies for head office. And also tackle the dreaded CV and think about getting a job when I get home.