Coconuts to Crampons: Bat cyclones, caves and the "Pinnacles"

Still looking for a really remote, end-of-the road, middle of nowhere jungle experience we decided to fly into Gunung Mulu National Park for our next adventure. This UNESCO world heritage site is really off the grid - literally. It is a 100 square km chunk of protected primary rainforest near the mountainous spine of Borneo that is only accessible by plane. The only thing here is an airstrip, a small Dayak village, a handful of homestays and lodges, and the Marriot (I am not kidding - the Marriot actually built a resort here, it costs a fortune and is seriously out of place). There are a few roads with the occational 1970's Toyota van shuttling tourists around and the odd local on a motorbike, but overall, the place is pretty quiet. There is no centralized water or power grid here - each lodge has their own gasoline generator that they run for a limited number of hours to provide electricity in the evenings for their guests and families. All food is flown in, so shortages are common - unfortunately we had to give up our daily espresso (we weren't staying at the Marriot). Despite these challenges though, the national park itself has built a surprising array of lodges, and chalets and even has a full-service cafe - the only one in the area that has a wide range of choices.

This area remained off the radar of most of the world until the Royal Geographic Society of London spent several years here in the 1970's mapping out the incredible cave systems here. The park is centered on a part of Borneo where tectonic plate activity has uplifted large layers of sandstone and limestone to the surface to create an impressive array of mountains and caves. Due to the high purity of the limestone and the enormous amount of rainfall (6000mm+/year), this area is home to some of the largest cave formations in the world. Like everything here in Borneo, they are supersized - the Sarawak Chamber (largest in the world) is big enough to fit 40 Boeing 747s, without overlapping their wings! Unfortunately, this particular chamber is only reachable by a 10hr trip underground and its only for advanced spelunkers (i.e. not me), but there are still TONS of caves to explore including the worlds largest cave passage. Our plan was to spend a few days here exploring some of the more accessible caves, and also a multi-day climb of one of the nearby limestone peaks to see a world famous natural formation called the "Pinnacles."

After meeting our guide "Rick" at the airport (BTW, you aren't actually allowed to visit much without having a guide, so it's pretty much mandatory), we headed to the Wind and Deer caves - the latter being the biggest cave passage in the world. After a one hour walk through the jungle along a nice boardwalk we reached the Deer cave entrance. This cave is BIG - like really, really big. My 200 lumen headlamp didn't even come close to being able to illuminate the ceiling of the cave. The place was an amazing underworld ecosystem of bugs, spiders, and of course BATS. Park staff estimate the bat colony in the cave to number somewhere in the range of 3-5 MILLION - that is a lot bats. So many so, that there are literally no mosquitos in the park at night compared to other places we have gone in the jungle. Walking through the cave accompanied with the constant twitter of bats, we had to be careful not to slip on the enormous piles of guano (you can imagine how much bat poop is created by 5 million bats, not to mention the ammonia smell). The cave is also home to the swiftlet, a bird species prized by the Chinese for its nest - bird's nest soup anyone? Along with the bats, these birds have adapted to be able to use echolocation to navigate in total darkness. I was so amazed to see these birds zipping through the cave at breakneck speed, avoiding stalactites with ease - they were like little bird missiles rocketing through the darkness.

Creepy crawly

Can you spot the tiny people?

How about these tiny people?

At the end of the day we took a seat outside the Deer cave entrance to see one of the events that Mulu park is famous for - the "bat exodus". Every night around dusk 5 million bats stream out of the cave continuously for over 30 minutes in a black, twisting cyclone of furry flying fury! It was absolutely spectacular.

Check out a video here of the bat exodus!

The next day was the start of our three day trek to see the Pinnacles of Mulu. It started with a trip to the local village where Marie tried her hand at shooting a real blowpipe (still used by hunters!) and then a 30 minute ride up the river into the jungle on a traditional longboat. These guys in the village are amazing - this thing is basically a really long canoe with an out-board motor on the back (the days of paddling are over) and they were manouvering this 20 ft long boat up raging rapids like they were taking a Sunday stroll in the park. One guy would stand at the bow of the boat with a long gondola-esk pole to push the nose away from rocks and logs while the boat driver would swing the back of the boat around when needed. Since the river was not very deep there was a significant amount of jumping out, pushing the boat, and of coarse hitting rocks and bottoming out. I couldn't believe the boat (which was completely made of wood, sealed with gum from a local tree) was actually still floating by the end of the trip. These guys must go through a new outboard propellor every week.

Jungle Queen

Next stop was at the Clearwater cave system which is over 100km long - but we only did about 800m, which was plenty enough for me.

Underground river

After the trek through the Clearwater cave we had a nice dip in the pool at the exit of the cave - the water was really... clear.

Next our journey started in earnest. We left the regular tour groups behind and took the boat another hour up river into the middle of nowhere where we were dropped off at the trail head on the side of the river. "Don't worry" our guide told us, the water level is too low today for Crocodiles to be an issue. Even so, Marie and I gave the river bank a wide berth while putting on our hiking boots for the 8km trek to our camp for the night. The trail was an easy 3 hour walk through primary rainforest - I was in heaven: sketchy moss covered rope bridges, huge butressed dipterocarp trees poking 80m above the jungle canopy, strange noises echoing through the forest, and battling leeches. We swapped great stories with our guide, and found out that his family is part of the Orang Ulu tribe and that is great-grandfather was a "headhunter"! Before the British outlawed the practice, headhunting was a common activity among the various tribes in Borneo. What better way to assert your dominance as a warrior than cutting off your enemies head and then displaying it hanging from the rafters of your village's communal longhouse?

Little did she know there was a leech under her gaitors

We overnighted at "Camp 5" - apparently the original British explorers had a serious lack of imagination. Turns out our guide Rick can not only navigate a jungle river, but he can also cook really well. When we booked our trek, all food was included - I was expecting Mr. Noodle with maybe a cookie or two for dessert. I was blown away when Rick brought over four full-on Malay dishes: chicken curry, vegetables, noodles. It was incredible - I still don't understand how he fit so much stuff into his pack. We didn't carry anything except our own clothes and personal belongings. At night we slept in a covered dorm style room which was completely open to outside. Good thing that the park conveniently rented out mosquito nets for the night to keep out the creepy crawlies (which there were many).

Cliff behind Camp 5

Supersize Snail

Click here for a video of a magical Avatar-esque plant!

The next morning we left camp at 6am for our climb up to the Pinnacles - the earliest any guest is allowed to leave camp due to safety reasons. As per our guide's plan, we actually left before anyone else in camp (there were about 30-40 people - this camp is not small). The climb up was a steep ascent of 1200m vertical up the side of a jungle covered limestone mountain. Before doing the hike, I thought "No problem" - we have hiked many hikes longer and higher than this. But this one was VERY different - I didn't factor in the 100% humidity at 30C+. I basically became a sweat factory for 3 hours. I don't even know how to describe it - I have never sweat so much in my entire life. I basically felt like I was doing the stairmaster in a sauna for 3 hours. We carried 3 litres of water each - and I must have sweat twice as much out. The last 400m also turned out to be almost completely vertical, and is climbed on a series of metal ladders bolted into the rock. Not easy when you are a sweat factory.

So hot... showing off the leg tan

Despite all the challenges we made it to the summit, and even had the whole place to ourselves for almost an hour. The Pinnacles are an amazing sight of hundreds of limestone spikes jutting more than 40m out from the jungle floor.

Jungle Queen surveying her empire from the top of a mini-pinnacle

The way down was unfortunately even more difficult than the way up - hiking mountains through the jungle is much different than anything I have experienced back home. Everything is wet. Everything is covered in green moss-slime. Roots, roots and more roots create a criss-crossing blanket over the path. The whole combination yields something akin to trying to climb down 1200m on a surface of ice - you literally cannot step on anything without your foot sliding out sending you down the mountain in a headlong rush. The only way down is on all-fours most of the time, with a little orangutan-ing from some of the tree branches and vines. All in all, it took us 3 hours to the summit, but 5 hours to decend - with all the fluid loss, we were pretty haggard when we got back to camp. I can confidently say that that was overall one of the most physically demanding hikes I have ever done. Thank goodness there was a clear, jungle stream beside the camp for a cool down.