Came. Climbed. Conquered.

• Rosie-ann Bogumil, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2015

The sweet scent of rambutans wafted through the rice fields, their spiked red shells plaguing the muddy ground. Across the simple slatted deck of the homestay cottage, stray grains of rice were scattered from last night’s pounding with a wooden pestle. Omnipresent, the erratic peaks of Mt Kinabalu loomed. Dense jungle graduated to sheer rock, an overlap of rich greens and intense greys. Low’s Peak rose slightly higher than the others, 4095 metres above the ocean.
Tomorrow, we would climb.

“I won’t need that!” I laughed, my sister holding out a second woollen jacket. “I’m hot already!”
At 3am, the only thing keeping me awake was exhilaration. We were about to journey to the peak for sunrise and the four of us – Mum, Dad, my sister Katie, and I – were well prepared with beanies, jumpers, thermals and gloves. Eight hours of climbing in steamy conditions the day before had left me sceptical to take on any more clothing.
My sister merely raised an eyebrow.
“Suit yourself. You’ll be wishing you had it when we get higher.”

I shivered, regretting my dismissal of the jumper. The wind was bitter, the thinning air icy. There was no longer any feeling in my gloved hands.
Ahead of me, Billygoat, our guide, treaded carefully, white shoes glowing under the clouded moonlight. It was those shoes that had earned him the nickname, because they looked like hooves as he trotted across the rocks.
There were two other girls with me, one in front and one behind, but my sister and parents we had left behind long ago. Together we trekked, punctuated by the stops and starts that were increasingly necessary as oxygen grew sparser. The sky was slowly lightening, the sun saying hello as the moon winked goodbye.
Finally, at 5.30am, we stopped.
The view?
Breathtaking.
Clouds circled below us, hiding the forest we had slogged through. The rising sun revealed the stone we had walked over, the precarious rope that had often been our only support. As our white breath curled in front of us, we stood, captivated, by the patchwork of peaks surrounding us.
That short wait for sunrise was the only reprieve we received. Now, it was time to head back down.
I jumped from slab to slab, deftly dodging cracks and crevices. Behind me, people murmured.
“Where is your guide?”
“Where is your group?”
“Where are your parents?”
“I have no idea!” I shouted with glee.
I soon found my family, who had missed the sunrise but were determined to reach the peak.
“See you at the bottom!” I called back.
My backpack bounced across my shoulders, the slabs now shrinking to stones. Vegetation slowly invaded my vision, the barren peak landscape quickly fading. Not a single fellow mountaineer was visible, and stray squirrels were my only companions as I reached the halfway-house, oblivious to the long wait ahead of me.
Borneo may have been the destination, but this mountain was my playground.