Mount Nombuyukong, Kota Marudu

This hiking trail, Mount Nombuyukong was found through facebook using my ever impressive investigative skills. Its 6.5km one way so 13km totaled and standing at 1603.57meter. When we actually had an outstation trip to Kota Marudu for a few days, me and my hiking friends which happened to consist of some of my office mates as well went to Stesen Serinsim to scout the place. My friend took the number of the officer guarding the entrance to Stesen Serinsim and arranged the trip through the kind lady who was ever ready to answer all of our question. We decided on a 2 days 1 night trip from 19-20 November 2016 where we will camp somewhere along the route.

The fee for this trip consist of;

1) Insurance RM7/pax

2) Permit RM31.80/pax (If 18years old below the fee is RM12.72)

3) Guide RM90/day (1-5pax) (so if like us we did the 2 days 1 night camping the guide fee will double)

4) Certificate RM5.30

Everything was paid on the day at the guard entrance. 

Early morning, me and Fei set out towards Sub Stesen Serinsim, Kota Marudu, picked up my sister and Tia along the way. Meurel and his brothers reached there an hour earlier than we did as we reached there around 12pm. The place had very limited line connection especially if you are a digi user. I had to use Waze to get there because I was unfamiliar with the routes. When we were almost at the entrance, we came across Meurel walking around lifting up his phone. I lowered my window car and asked him what the heck was he doing, apparently he was trying to find phone signal to call out because celcom can still get line at certain area.  It had already started to rain but there was still another person that had not grace us with his present and my friend asked me whether we wanted to wait for the dude. Now this guy claimed he was interested to join us hiking for the first time. The guy lives in Kota Marudu district and all of us lives much further away. We had already set up to meet around 11am and its 12 something already. So I said wait for a while but my gut feeling was that he was a no-show and as we found out much much later on..it was true. He really did not came and gave some excuse about not feeling well. But the thing is, he texted my friend around the afternoon (which he received while hiking halfway to the camp site) and did not picked up calls from the guides. Of course there is also the issue of him uploading photos on Instagram early morning when he was "sick"..hhmmm..its better to just be truthful and informed people earlier on if you suddenly feel like bailing out then to leave people hanging.. 

So enough of that, nearing 1pm the guides advised us to just start early the next day since its raining and its late already. But after a proper discussion among the members, we decided to just start hiking that day and set up camp at whichever KM that is suitable. The guides says that KM1 to KM3 has a decent hut, toilet and water source so our group opted for KM3. All of us carried our on bags which consist of food, sleeping bag, sleeping tent, extra clothes and water. So we all looked like hunch backs with our ponchos on. 

From KM1 to KM3 with all our heavy loads was bearable..we arrived at the camp site of KM 3 around 4 something in the evening. There were 7 of us and 2 guides and the guides were really good. They would rest at every 1KM hut along the way to re-group. We actually had arrived quite early at KM3 but the guide say if we were all dudes he would have continued onwards because KM4 and so on has no toilet. So us ladies were quite content to camp at KM3. We picked our own spot to set up tents and then afterwards prepared our dinner. Good thing we bought our own mini cooker and kettle, Chris help set up the mini cooker and we ate maggi cup for dinner. Our group chatted the time away and looked for leeches. Tia and Evet got bit the most and Tia's toes were still bleeding post leech attack. We finally had to put a plaster on her toes to stop her bleeding. Come night time, us ladies retreat into our own tent. Me and Fei sprayed our shoes and tents with insecticide and almost suffocated ourselves in the process. It was still drizzling but I managed to get some decent sleep despite the noises from hikers that were doing the day trip passing by. The last batch of them to go down rested at out hut for more than 30 minutes. I was awake because the girls were chattering loudly and I looked at my phone and saw that it was 9pm and these people still had 3km more to cover..Kesian..We knew they started at 7am in the morning and they were probably really exhausted.

Waiting for the water to boil

Our camp site at KM3

All of us woke up early morning, ate maggi again for breakfast and then set out around 6.30am. We left our stuff at the hut and only bring really important things like water and snacks. The hike up to KM4 was tiring. It felt forever and we find small signage from time to time indicating the KM we have covered but hut KM4 felt like forever to get to. Finally I stop at an area with a long log that had fallen and named the place pondok 3.95KM since we could not seem to reach KM4 hut. We waited for each other there and joke around to ease the tiredness before setting out again. 

We named this log hut KM3.95

Now after passing KM4 hut, we caught a glimpse of a summit among the tall trees. So me and fei stop to laugh at ourselves  because that was the summit of Mount Nombuyukong and we were clearly still at the bottom. When Chris arrived at our spot we "happily" show him glance of the summit among the trees and he just lost some color to his face. So we asked him to just keep going because we wanted to show Tia & Evet our discovery. When the 2 of them arrived, we pointed out to them our future, they thought we were joking and stated to laughed hysterically. But then Evet got serious and asked the guide is it true, the guide just nodded his head which send the 4 of us into awkward laughing mode.. This is the moment which we though "what have we done.."

 

After KM4 hut, we saw the summit among the tree top

Small streams to cross

 So from that point onwards, the 4 of us ladies hike together for support. Every now and then I would glance behind and count the head numbers and then stop to wait for them. Through the few hikes that we have done together, in my humble opinion its not how fast you get there but the memory of the journey itself. Each person have their own reason to hike, for myself immersing oneself in nature and the memories you have together as a group was worth much more than speeding alone towards the summit. Besides, safety first especially for lady hikers..make sure to keep a lookout for each other while hiking in the mountains. There were a few spots where we had to help each other out, like somewhere towards KM5 hut a tree have fallen at the edge of a cliff and blocked the way. When we arrived at KM5 hut where the guys were waiting, my water was almost finished. I just drank the water from the waterfall and even put some in my bottle. I don't know if its because of the rain but the waterfall in front of hut KM5 was really big and mesmerizing to look at. I even took a video of it. We rest there for a while eating biscuits before continued on..

The waterfall at KM5

The trail to the summit was quite challenging and I was sweating profusely because of the heat. For myself, the trail to the summit of Mount Nambuyukong was different from other places we hike..the word that came to my mind was mystical. There were mist among the tall trees which make you feel like you are in a different world. But, the trail does get harder and harder the nearer we were to the summit. 

Beautiful trail

The last spot were we girls re-group was at 6.2KM or 6.25KM. Then I continued on in front of my girlfriends without stopping anymore as my own mentality was starting to break because of exhaustion and dehydration. The last few hundred metres was the worse and that's when I really needed to stay positive by playing uplifting songs in my head. Hahaaa.. Surprisingly that exhaustion vanished the moment I saw the last stairs that I needed to climbed to get to the summit. The guys and the 1st guide were already resting there and I went into top model mode with Meurel as my photographer..one by one the others came up and the final person came up at 11.20am. We had our group photo and then started to descend down after resting a bit.. 

 

Our awesome group photo

Unfortunately it started to rain around 3pm which is about the time me and Fei arrived at our campsite KM3. The guys were just few minutes earlier than us..and they asked if we had any food to cooked. But we were out of food as well.. so our mistake here was not bringing enough food. Bummer..The guide said we had to continue to descend down because the office will close at 5pm and our certificate must be claimed by 5pm. But since Tia & Vet have not yet reached the campsite, I asked the guys to continued on with the guide to get the certificate while we waited for the 2 girls. Almost an hour later their arrived, apparently my sister slip and injured her ankle so she could only walked slowly. So I carried both our tents to ease her burden before heading down with Fei.. we asked both of them to hike slowly with the guide. When Me and Fei reached the hut at KM2 roughly close to 5pm, I remembered that the 2 girls did not bring their torchlight..I had one but Fei's torchlight was just a miniature keychain..so we did the maths and I knew that the 2 of them would not be able to make it to the parking before night. So I turned on my flashlight and hung it on the Hut at KM2 hoping that they would know it was from us. Then the 2 of us speed up our pace despite our aching foot to reach the parking spot by nightfall. Now only God knows how many prayers was recited that day but we managed to reached the entrance of Stensen Serinsim by 6pm something when there is still some light.. The feeling of overwhelmed was definitely there when the both of us finally were out of the woods. The fact was we were both really scared because we had no light and the rain made the trails wet and in some places it had already turned into small streams.. Also the woods quickly became darker by the minute because of the rain and we knew how "keras" Mount Nombuyukong trail was. The first thing we did when we get to our car? Fei took out the bun she left behind to share. The last time we ate was in the morning so we were starving..After changing into dry clothes, I spotted 2 silhouette walking towards the parking lot with a flashlight, the 2 girls made it safely out by 7pm. The 4 of us were overjoyed and after everyone changed into dry attire, I drove us to the nearest KFC for dinner before heading home.. Mount Nombuyukong is highly recommended, the trail is well maintained..there are even resting hut at every 1KM and the toilet at KM3 could even flush to my surprise. But my friend Fei did experienced some puzzling scenario like getting her bag pull while hiking down so I would say like every other mountain, be respectful and pray for protection while hiking.