You can read about it here. I personally think that Kinabalu is one of the safest mountain to climb in the world. However, accident happens. As long as you follow your guide’s advice and Sabah Parks guidelines, you should be enjoying the trip more.

If you read the news properly, the accidents happened at Mesilau Trail, way down from the Rock Face where the barren rock and rope area (which is the commonest place people get injured).

This is the excerpt of the news:
KOTA KINABALU: A climber slipped and fell to his death when trekking up Mount Kinabalu.

Tan Tzu Hau, 31, from Inanam here, was found dead 5.5km from the Mesilau trail at about 2pm on Monday by a Sabah Parks porter.

Ranau district police chief Deputy Supt Suhaimy Hashim said that Tan was part of a mixed group locals and peninsular Malaysians trekking up the mountain through the Mesilau trail when the incident occurred.

”Tan was trailing behind the group when he apparently slipped and fell. No one knows exactly how he fell but a porter who was behind spotted his sprawled body beside the trail,” Suhaimy said.

He said the incident occurred near the Panar Laban rest house at the height of 3,270m of the 4,101m mountain.

”His body has been brought down to Ranau and we are waiting for the post mortem to be conducted, he said, adding that police did not suspect foul play as they believe it was a case of misadventure.

Masilau trail is second but tougher route to the mountain as compared to the more popularly used Summit Trail or South Ride Trail.

Accidental deaths among climbers on Mount Kinabalu is relatively rare though they have been a few incidents with the last reported incident occurring in Aug 2001 when a British teenager Ellie James lost her way and was found dead on the mountain nearly a week after she went missing.

It started with my text-link-ads php script which was not parsed properly on my static html website, which was then penalized by Google. For about a month, mount-kinabalu-borneo.com was invisible from Google search engine. It hurts, but I learn a lot from it. I am not sure why it happened, but I believe that my webhosting server did someting which leads to broken php scripts on the website, which invloved all other php scripts to run the website properly.

Because of that, I forced myself to look into upgrading the website engine. Old mount-kinabalu-borneo.com was created from scratch, using WYSIWYG HTML generator, Kompozer/N|vu. All pages of the website were static. It means that I have to hand code every pages if I want to make any changes. I am not good at using CSS by the way.

After researching for few open source content management system (CMS), I end up with modx, because it is the only cms that could give me friendly URLs for each and every generated page. They have a very good website structure, similar like the old mount-kinabalu-borneo.com, and their templates were also easy to understand. Wordpress and Drupal were high on the list, but was not a good candidate, as I cannot get friendly URL for their static pages with a .html at the end. I need that .html suffixes on the URL because it will be the same structure with my old website. I just don’t want the backlinks from other websites broken with a new URL structure.

During this period of time, the website got hacked. Some script kiddies managed to get through my servers and installed a virus, which leads to injection of an iframe script on each and every page of the website. Apparently the script that they injected linked my website to a website in China which spreads malicious software. Again, it hurts my website even more as Google now blocked my website with a warning!!!

Although I recovered my first page appearance on Google search engine result page, visitors cannot acces my website because Google put a warning before they enter it!

Anyway, after running an antivirus software on my server (mind you that I hosted my website on a LINUX server), they found PHP.Shell script that is malicious. It seems that the virus will not run on the server, but will run on any Windows PC which access my website, as they will automatically download themselves silently!

I also updated my modx backend engine, from 0.9.6.3 to 1.0.0.0, as I have a very high suspicion that old modx version have some secuity flaws. Only after the upgrade, the iframe script on the website is gone.

During those period of time, I emailed Exabytes (my hosting) few times, in which they could not help much. I also emailed Google few times to plead and appeal, as to not penalize my website anymore, and get it out from their sandbox.

Glad to share with you that today morning, when I got into my clinic, everything is back to normal.

Morale of the story : ALWAYS update your website and blog. Security is a very BIG issue on outdated website and blog.

Happy fasting for Muslim and never stop blogging!

We were just pulling out of the car park when Brian received a call on his mobile phone. He said ‘Stop the car’. My heart froze. I knew that my darling, beautiful daughter had been found dead. It was the most horrible moment of my life, but strangely, I felt an enormous sense of relief. We returned to our room and within ten minutes I had written the tribute to Ellie, which appeared in the British national press the following day. It is extraordinary how something written quickly, in a state of extreme grief and desperation, has become a cliché used by many of the people who have sent us cards and messages of condolence. ‘Ellie achieved more in seventeen and a half years than most people do in seventy five’. It is heartening that people agree with me.

Ellie had been spotted from the main trail soon after dawn. The guide who saw the pink lining of Ellie’s ski jacket through his binoculars was the younger brother of our guide, Sugarah. By the time he had confirmed that Ellie was dead and returned to the restaurant at Laban Rata to ensure that the message was relayed to us, it was 10.20. It took the best part of an hour for the guides to get from the main trail to where Ellie’s body lay which is an indication of the difficulty of the terrain. It took a further two hours to bring Ellie’s body down a ridge to the main trail on a stretcher. Ellie was finally brought back to the Park Headquarters as the sun was setting. The guides, aware of the press attention, with heads bowed formed a protective shield around the stretcher carrying her, to deny the photographers their pictures.

Very late that evening we went to the mortuary to identify Ellie. We were aware that two dozen photographers had gathered. The police did not help much by guiding us in with their lights flashing. We were unable to get into the mortuary without fighting our way through. Bruce damaged at least one camera in the process. We saw Ellie, exquisite but cold, still wearing all her clothes that were soaked through. Ellie had been found with her legs inside her rucksack but without her ski jacket.

The few things that she had taken with her were neatly lined up in the lee of the cliff: the camera, water bottle, small hand torch, head torch, money, first aid kit, tissues and contact lens case. She was well prepared. It is a pity that she had not also packed waterproof trousers and a foil blanket. It is possible that in a late stage of hypothermia and feeling warm and cosy rather than cold, she had removed her jacket together with her two pink hats. In death her face was perfect and more beautiful than we had ever known her. With neat eyebrows and heightened colour in her cheeks, she looked like the bust of Queen Nefertiti that Ellie had admired in a Berlin museum years before.

The photographers were still there, annoyed apparently that we had released a statement via the British Press Association, when we had refused to be interviewed locally. We were unaware of the extent of the coverage back in the UK. Although Ellie’s story was front page news in the Sabah press, we saw nothing on television and had not been approached by local newspapers. The management and staff of the Tanjung Aru resort discreetly screened all of our phone calls and ensured our privacy by patrolling the grounds in pairs. Bruce shouted at the photographers who were crowding around us again and chased them off. The police did little to discourage him. The incident was reported the following day as a ‘commotion at the mortuary’, not the sort of publicity we wanted.

On Friday there was a service for Ellie conducted by the local Chinese, Anglican minister. The congregation was large as Outward Bound Sabah closed for the day and all Tom’s friends and colleagues came to offer their support. The hymn chosen from the service book was ‘Amazing Grace,’ one of Ellie’s favourites. Ellie was dressed in the batik skirt and top, similar to that worn by Malaysian Airlines cabin crew, she had bought when we were first in KK.

We rode with her in the hearse to the local Chinese cemetery where Ellie was cremated in the simplest coffin available made from marine ply. Although both ceremonies were much more open and public than is usual in the West, they were very moving and we felt that Ellie would have approved. Certainly Ellie had told us that should she die, she wanted to be cremated as simply as possible and we could not bear the thought of traipsing round the world with a coffin in tow.

We had already asked our tour leader if we could return to the village where our guides lived. We were keen to thank them for their unstinting efforts, day and night, to find Ellie. Although the SMART team had been given much prominence in the press, they had not arrived in time to do any searching. They took eight hours to get up the first part of the mountain - that which Ellie had completed in a little over two and a half hours. Wednesday morning saw them eating breakfast and saying prayers when the news arrived that Ellie had been found. Earlier in the week some locally based soldiers had searched lower down the mountain lest Ellie had somehow reached the forest. Unfortunately, seven of their number became lost for a short time.

Poring is beautiful, although we were in no mood to enjoy it. Henry had been found, but despite assurance that he was fine, we just wanted to see him for ourselves. Ellie, darling reckless Ellie, was still missing, cold alone and frightened on the highest mountain in South East Asia. We had a lovely room but could not sleep for thinking about how she must be feeling. It was the first of many agonizing nights. At four o’clock we walked in the grounds and listened to the rain forest waking. We thought that she would also be waking and prayed that she would feel energized by our prayers. The hibiscus bushes were exquisite and reminded us of the huge one we have in a pot on our balcony in Germany. We suddenly felt very homesick and wanted everything to return to normal. It never did.

Jacquie, our tour guide, met us with a minibus at 07.00 and we travelled back to Mount Kinabalu. It was a shame that we could not appreciate the drive, as there were dogs and cows lying at intervals across the road, something that we would otherwise have found amusing. The park headquarters’ staff was kind and discreet. They moved quietly around us, bringing coffee and sandwiches to a comfortable lounge and giving us regular updates on their progress. The morning seemed endless. We received phone calls from the High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur, the Chief of Police and the Sabah Tourist Board.

We also understood that the local and British press had got wind of a story. We were anxious that nothing should be released until we had been able to contact Tom at work in Kinarut and our families in England. We felt like caged lions in the lounge, so went downstairs at 11.00 to look at the museum. It was beautifully arranged and worthy of a visit. We should have gone there sooner as the time started to pass more quickly and it would soon be time for Henry to arrive.

Henry walked towards us looking surprisingly normal after such an ordeal. We had an emotional reunion outside the building and went back into the lounge. Henry sat close to us and was able to give a remarkably lucid account of what had taken place. I felt so proud of him. It was astounding that a fifteen year old, who had endured what he had, could behave in so mature a manner. Henry drew diagrams to show how they had sheltered together and the terrain that they had crossed. By looking at the topographical maps displayed on the walls of the lounge, he was able to give us a much clearer picture of where Ellie had gone. He had been absolutely right in the information he had given to the guide who found him. Surely, it was just a matter of time before she was found.

Jacquie returned shortly afterwards with the news that we were to transfer to the Tanjung Aru Resort in Kota Kinabalu. This is the most expensive hotel in Sabah and definitely out of our price range. We felt rather embarrassed by this kindness. Travelbag thought that we could wait comfortably for news of Ellie and once found she could spend a few days recuperating in luxury. She would be able to enjoy the swimming pool, go wind surfing and even dive off the nearby islands. We agreed, but were still praying that the cloud would lift from the mountain, so that the army helicopters would be able to join the rescue and bring her to us at Tanjung Aru.

The next few days were the strangest we have ever spent. We were prisoners in a five star detention centre. We had two adjacent rooms with a connecting door, so rarely needed to venture out into the corridor. Torn came to stay with us and gave tremendous support to Henry who had begun to question why Ellie, who had been so brave, had been the one to get lost. He felt guilty and kept re-living the events of the last few hours he spent with her. It was awful.

Once we had broken the news to our families and closest friends, the phone never stopped ringing. It was wonderful that so many people wanted to speak to us, but exhausting to say the same thing over and over again. Jacquie was phoning from the mountain at regular intervals, but each time it was the same. The weather was still bad due to the typhoon centred over the Phillipines. We could see that by the waves on the murky sea and the cloud that obliterated our view of Mount Kinabalu.

Each morning that dawned brought new hope, each evening brought despair. Perhaps the worst time of the day was four o’ clock as we knew that there were only two hours of daylight left in which to find Ellie and certainly insufficient time to begin a helicopter rescue. During the day we would escape the luxury hotel compound for an hour at a time and walk two miles down the public beach where nearly everyone would greet us with delightful smiles and say: ‘Hello. How are you? Where are you from?’

Tom and Henry flew to Sandakan on Monday 20 August to visit the orangutan sanctuary at Sepilok. This was to have been the final visit of our holiday and the one Ellie and Henry had been most looking forward to. There was no need for the boys to wait in our room for news. They stayed overnight and made a second visit to watch the orphans being fed on milk and bananas, telephoning every few hours. There were six flights each day so they could get back quickly if necessary. The weather was bright and clear at Sepilok; perhaps it would clear further west tomorrow.

To be continued to Part 5…

This is precisely what Ellie and Henry were also doing at this time. Ellie rushed ahead and Henry lost sight of her. We presume that in her enthusiasm to get down, she just rushed past or followed one of the quartz ’stripes’ in the granite that in fog could conceivably be mistaken for the white rope. They failed to turn sharp left, but went straight on towards St John’s Peak. She called out to him, however he was unable to hear what she was saying as the wind blew so strongly. Henry thought she had fallen and was crying for help, so stumbling in the direction of her voice, he also left the trail. He thought that he had broken his ankle as he fell against a rock.

Fortunately, it was only his trousers that were damaged. Finding Ellie, Henry discovered that she was not hurt, but lost. Now they were both lost and tried to find their way back to the trail. Being lost was one problem, they were also becoming very cold and wet by now and Ellie decided that it was most important just to get down. The mountain fell away very steeply at this point and after getting down a steep gully they realised that they could proceed no further so they agreed to stop for a while, build a shelter and rest.

A rush of adrenaline enabled Ellie to lift heavy boulders and build a wall. Henry was amazed that he could tear down branches from low-growing shrubs to line and cover the shelter. They tied a large yellow plastic bag to a tree in order to mark their position. This was subsequently found and reported in the press, although some reports placed its position further down the mountain. They crawled inside the shelter and curled up together, Ellie with her feet and legs inside her capacious rucksack. From time to time they ate nuts and banana chips and drank their water. They talked about what would happen if they were not found and tried to picture Bruce, Tom and me. They prayed harder than they have ever done before that they would be found and if they were not, that we would be able to continue our lives without them. Henry reports that he was very frightened, but that Ellie was extraordinarily calm. Several times, when he felt she was slipping into sleep, he woke her, as he was afraid she might die in his arms.

After waiting for what seemed like ten hours, but actually only six, the sky cleared and a layer of cloud rolled back, improving visibility for a short while. Ellie seemed instantly refreshed and decided that as it would soon be dark and nobody had come to find them, she should try to find the trail. They clambered back up the steep gully. With improved visibility, she could see where they needed to go and set off, rucksack on her back, across a steep ridge. Again, she cried out as she disappeared from view. Henry could not tell whether she was calling him to follow or shouting as she fell down a precipice. He tried to follow, but his bigger feet and less agile build prevented him from crossing the ridge. Henry had left the shelter and was unable to climb back to it, so he found himself as much shelter as he could and waited to die or to be rescued. He later said that his feet and legs were completely numb, his teeth chattering and his upper body aching with cold.

Henry was found by a mountain guide, who had joined the search on arrival at Laban Rata with his group. It was 14.30, about two hours after Ellie had left him. Henry had entered the early stages of hypothermia and needed to be helped to the hut at Sayat Sayat. He remained there, wrapped in blankets, until his body temperature had stabilized and he was able to walk with support to Laban Rata. Naturally, he was unaware that Ellie was still missing. He presumed that she had reached the trail and told the guides where to find him. Henry was given food, warm drinks and a change of clothes by other climbers and put to bed, where he slept until morning.

Kit was the first of our party to arrive at 07.40 in the restaurant at Laban Rata. I asked if Ellie and Henry were with him. He replied that they had been just behind him at the summit, but that they had stopped to talk to Bruce and he had carried on, as it was so wet and windy. When they did not appear we assumed that they had stopped at their overnight hut to collect their things. This thought was endorsed by someone from another group, who claimed to have seen them there. Bruce arrived, soaking wet, a few minutes later and went down to our hut to change his trousers. He came back to the restaurant and drank the coffee I had ordered for him.

We began to worry when Ellie and Henry still did not appear. Surely it could not take them that long to get their things together? Bruce went back up to their hut to find Henry’s rucksack on his bed and panic really set in. He told our guides that they had not arrived and another climber reported that they had been seen going into the hut at Sayat Sayat. Bruce and the guides set off for the hut more than a kilometre back up the mountain. Henry and Sugarah being much faster were already on their way down, having found no sign of the children, as Bruce approached the hut. The guides returned to the restaurant at Laban Rata. The alarm was raised and three guides started to retrace their steps to the summit.

By 11.00 eight guides, arriving with new groups of tourists, had joined the search. The park authorities had been notified and a group of rangers sent to add their knowledge and expertise to that of the Dusun guides. Their work was hampered by the weather, which by now was atrocious and the ‘red herrings’ that kept filtering through. Apparently, claimed one climber, ‘they’ had been so cold that they had not bothered to stop at the restaurant, but just kept walking down. This was plausible, but unlikely, as they had been so keen to see me and talk about the climb. A phone call from Park Headquarters reported ‘they’ were sleeping in a chalet in the park. It was very confusing. Our hearts and minds lurched between optimism and desperation during those five hours in the restaurant at Laban Rata. All the while cheerful people burst into the rest house, excited by their individual achievements. It was ghastly; we felt so helpless. We could not join the search for fear of getting lost ourselves and could not eat anything as we felt dreadfully sick.

Bruce and I were advised to start walking down to the Timpahon Gate. He was very tired from the morning’s exertion and my foot was still sore, but our condition seemed unimportant as we rushed down the mountain. It was no longer raining and we gradually removed layers of clothing as we descended through the climatic regions. We did not stop to admire the scenery this time.

Half way down we met a park ranger who stopped us and asked our names. I suppose we fitted the description of the missing children’s parents. He made numerous radio calls, advising us that there was some news. We waited anxiously as his radio lost contact with someone on Low’s Peak and after several minutes the signal was received again. Henry had been found! Our joy at hearing that news was soured by the realization that they had separated. ‘Oh Ellie, what have you done?’ we both cried. We tried to imagine what had taken place up there and prayed to thank God for his help in guiding the rescuers to find Henry and to ask for strength to wait patiently for Ellie’s return.

We raced down the trail in a daze, not knowing what to think. At the Timpahon Gate the other older members of our group were waiting for us. We had persuaded the younger ones to leave as soon as the search was started. We felt dreadful as we had wasted half a day of their valuable holiday time and caused them unnecessary anguish. They were wonderful. Lynn, Adrian, Pat and Alan hugged us and said that the only thing that mattered was that Ellie was found.

To be continued to part 4…