Tuesday, November 23, 2010

An MTB first in Sabah


Riding a mountain bike around Mount Kinabalu, unsupported might sound easy, or at least like a bit of a camping trip. Nothing to write home about in fact. Well as it turned out it wasn’t easy but we did have a great time.

Our attempt was, to our knowledge, the first time this had been tried, there have been at least two teams that have cycled around the mountain before but both have been supported, one of these we did in 2006.

The difference between supported and unsupported really comes down to carrying a load of weight, and that’s the crux in this particular situation because the route around Kinabalu is extremely hilly. Some 4,300 + metres of climbing in fact and once you add 7 – 9kg to your bike weight it gets hard, hard on your legs and hard on your backside.

Some of the route was unknown territory but we were fairly confident that we could find the trail and find it we did. I guess its always nice to have some things to work out on the trip itself. We could have recce’d the whole route and have it fully planned but that would have taken a lot of the fun out of it.

Progress on the new road from Ranau to Kota Marudu was surprising, this ride will be completely different in a couple of years so it was especially good to have done it now. A lot of beautiful villages and rivers along the way will soon disappear as the palm oil plantations come in.

So what is next?

There are several bike expeditions still waiting to be done and some will be happening in the next year or so, this beautiful state of ours still holds many secrets and I think it will be quite some time before the exploring is finished.

No comments:

Post a Comment