On a helicopter recon of Imbak we discovered that the canyon's southern rim rose with vertical cliff walls to a summit of 5,000 feet called Gunung (Mount) Kuli. I contacted local rangers to get info on the peak, only to be told it had never been climbed and we would have to be fools to try.
By now, in the full throes of explorer's red mist, I contacted the government and park's authorities only to be told the same thing. It was unreal — a virgin peak in the middle of the jungle — the kind of thing this expedition was created for.
With the summit of the peak and all the dazzling creatures that must live there in our sights, cameraman Johnny (Buck) Rogers, climbing supremo Tim Fogg and I set off with a few hundred feet of rope, 10 day's worth of noodles and one pair of pants each.
The Borneo jungle makes you feel like you’ve just had a mud fight in a Turkish steam bath. With no water on the ridge or rock, one set of sodden clothes for the daytime and a dry set for the night, we were condemned to levels of squalor no human should ever sink to.
We spent the early evenings wandering around our camps au naturel as we didn't want to ruin our dry supplies. Every morning, we did impressions of gummy grandmas sucking on lemons as we squeezed into our soaking, stinking sewer suits. With no shelter other than the insides of our hammocks and no light, we'd retire straight to bed just after dark and sit huddled up like swinging bananas while Tim played mournful Celtic tunes on his tin whistle (harmonica).
Our first challenge was to get close to the rock face. Over several days we hacked our way through the forest, ascending from sea level to nearly 3,000 feet where the rock began.
Once close, we found the rock was not an unbroken climb, but a brutal ridge where vertical sandstone rock was interspersed with knife-edged ridgeline covered in vegetation.
At this altitude, the ecosystem becomes a moss forest with every tangled tree root and vine swathed in thick, green, felt moss duvets. It turns every glade into a Tolkienesque cavern and you half expect a giant spider or orc to emerge from the darkness any second to steal your noodles.
The moss soaks up the endless rain like a green sponge, meaning every step or squeeze soaks you to the bone. The thousands of pitcher plants — some of them holding two and a half liters (approximately 2.7 quarts) of water and able to capture rats and birds — tip acidic sludge down the back of your neck as you machete through the undergrowth where the rattan and grasses turn the slashing into death by paper cut.
The vegetation was so thick that we proceeded at about 10 to 20 yards an hour. It was a great relief every time we broke out onto rock — at least it didn't feel like we were crawling through a sewer.
We had several very close calls on the ridge. Johnny was coming up toward me on a very steep incline (unroped) where he grabbed a root to haul himself up. The root came clean off in his hand and all I saw was him pitching back into space with spiky treetops like spears far below aimed at his bottom.
Time went into slow motion — I saw his face open in horror, his hands flailing. In my mind I even saw myself telling his widow and small child the news and a lifetime of guilt ahead of me — all in less than a second.
Luckily, he stepped back onto a tiny ledge and just managed to halt himself. Then he looked behind him at the empty space and just laughed maniacally for about half an hour. Ten minutes later, I repeated his mistake exactly and sat afterward hugging my knees and gibbering like a pestered chimp.
The rock climbing will never be mentioned in any coffee table book called Great Climbs of the World — it was horrible. The surface was a crumbly sandstone overgrown with vegetation and impossibly brittle. It was like climbing in shrubbery with the added bonus that your handhold would probably just come off in your hand.
On the hardest section of the climb very near the summit I reached for a hold and a slab of rock the size of a fridge freezer slid right off the face, skidded past my feet and over the top of my ropes, and narrowly missed taking Tim out completely beneath me. Another gibbering chimp moment.
Generally speaking, I love all of my expeditions — the hardship just accentuates the pleasure. This, however, was hell from start to finish.
It never stopped raining, was alternately fiercely hot or waterlogged cold, but as I pushed my way up through the final rock pitch and ripped my tattered and slashed hands through the last few razor-sharp bushes to the summit, the joy of achievement finally kicked in.
We had made it, completing the first ascent of one of the few remaining unclimbed peaks in the world. Johnny and Tim ascended my ropes and we strode together up to the summit, grinning like morons.
