Mount Kinabalu is a prominent mountain in Southeast Asia. It is located in Kinabalu National Park (a World Heritage Site) in the east Malaysian state of Sabah, which is on the island of Borneo in the tropics.
The main peak of the mountain (Low’s Peak) stands at a height of 4,095 metres (13,435 ft) above sea level and can be relatively easily climbed by a person with a good physical condition, and requires no mountaineering equipment.
Mount Kinabalu is essentially a huge granite dome (batholith) that was pushed up from the earth’s crust as molten rock millions of years ago. In geological terms, it is a very young mountain as the granite cooled and hardened only about 10 million years ago. It is still pushing up at the rate of 5 mm per annum. During the Pleistocene Period of about 100,000 years ago, the massive mountain was covered by huge sheets of ice and glaciers which flowed down its slopes, scouring its surface in the process and creating the 1800 m deep Low’s Gully ( named after Hugh Low) on its North side. Its granite composition and the glacial formative processes are readily apparent when viewing its craggy rocky peaks.