Guide with 1k climbs to rescue geologists on Mt Kinabalu

Mount Kinabalu guide Jahinin Waimi (right), 43, prepares his equipment and is assisted by his wife Hanneh Alias Supilin before going up the mountain at his home in Kampung Dumpiring Atas, Kundasang, in Sabah today. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Najjua Zulkefli, June 9, 2015.

One of Mount Kinabalu's most experienced mountain guides was today called upon to “rescue” two geologists stranded 4km up on the mountain that is still being shaken by minor aftershocks.

The Sabah Geology Department was forced to call on Jahinin Waimi, who reputedly had made 1,000 climbs in an 11-year career, to bring the geologists down after the helicopter that had airlifted them up in the morning could not evacuate them this afternoon due to rain and low clouds enveloping the mountain.

A small aftershock was reportedly felt at Laban Rata – 6.3km up the mountain – at10.40am while another small jolt at 1.42pm sent female staff scurrying out of the Sabah national park headquarters.

Jahinin was an obvious pick as he was one of 90 guides the park mustered last Friday to help bring down some 103 climbers that were left stranded on the mountain.

They had set out a temporary paths over the ones destroyed in the quake for rescuers.

Jahinin was entertaining visitors at his Kampoung Dumpiring Atas home when the call for help came at around 5.30pm.

It took only minutes for the 43-year-old father of four to get kitted up for the climb.

It was a quick change as earlier he had gone to the park headquarters as guests for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's visit.

“This is not something unusual,” he said of the late climb and in the cold and rain.

He estimated it would take him and another guide around one and a half hours to reach “KM4”.

“That is if they are there,” he said.

And he believed it would be another hour down.

“We'll be back around 7pm if everything goes as planned.” he said.

Most of the paths up the mountain, either from the more well-used Timpohon Gate or the more challenging Masilou route, had been destroyed by the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that struck the town of Ranau, just 17km from the mountain last Friday.

The quake killed 13 people, mostly pupils of a Singapore primary school participating in a mountaineering course at a place called Via Feratta.

Four mountain guides were also killed by falling rocks and rock slides triggered by the quake.

Two climbers, a 13 year-old pupil of the Keratong primary school and a 35-year-old teacher, are still unaccounted for and presumed dead.

Search for the two continued yesterday.

- TMI