In 1851, British colonial administrator and naturalist Hugh Low led an expedition from the coastal town of Tuaran into the interior of northern Borneo. He became the first recorded person to reach the summit of Mount Kinabalu, and the mountain's highest point -- Low's Peak, at 4,095.2 meters -- still carries his name. More than a century later, botanist E. J. H. Corner led two Royal Society expeditions to the region in 1961 and 1964, and his detailed surveys of the mountain's extraordinary plant life helped make the scientific case for protection. The region was designated a national park in 1964, one of the first in the newly formed nation of Malaysia. The park headquarters sits at 1,563 meters elevation on the southern boundary, 88 kilometers by road from Kota Kinabalu. Every climber who ascends the summit trail -- 47,613 of them in 2010 alone -- passes through here.

Kinabalu Park spans an almost absurd range of ecosystems. At the base, lowland dipterocarp forest grows thick and tall, the canopy closing overhead in a green vault. Climb higher and the trees shift to montane oak and rhododendron, the air cooling and the clouds pressing in. Higher still, coniferous forest gives way to alpine meadows and the stunted, wind-scoured bushes of the summit zone. UNESCO has identified the park as a Centre of Plant Diversity for Southeast Asia, noting that it contains representatives of at least half of all Borneo's plant species, with genetic lineages traceable to China, Australia, the Himalayas, and the pan-tropical flora. The mountain is famous for its carnivorous plants -- the pitcher plant Nepenthes rajah chief among them -- and its orchids, which number in the hundreds of species. Among the animal species found nowhere else on Earth are the Kinabalu giant red leech and the Kinabalu giant earthworm.

One of the park's most dramatic features is Low's Gully, a ravine 1.6 kilometers deep and 10 kilometers long that drops away from the summit plateau on the mountain's north side. The gully was carved by glaciers during the Pleistocene, when sheets of ice covered the upper slopes and scoured the granite surface as they moved. The summit trail begins at Timpohon, with an alternative route along the Mesilau Trail. Every climber must be accompanied by an accredited guide -- a regulation born from both conservation concerns and the real risk of altitude sickness at nearly 4,100 meters. The private company Sutera Sanctuary Lodges manages accommodation, including the mountain hostel at Laban Rata where climbers spend the night before their pre-dawn push to the summit. In 2010, the park received more than 611,000 visitors total, making it one of the most popular destinations in all of Malaysia.

Mount Kinabalu is one of the youngest non-volcanic mountains in the world. Its granodiorite core cooled and hardened roughly 10 million years ago -- a geological instant -- and isostatic forces continue to push it upward at a measurable rate. The mountain's youth explains its jagged profile: there has not been enough time for erosion to smooth its peaks into the rounded shapes of older ranges. A 1997 satellite survey established the summit height at 4,095.2 meters, slightly less than the previously published figure but still the highest point on the island of Borneo and in all of Maritime Southeast Asia. The park's biodiversity is directly linked to this altitude. During glacial periods, the mountain's upper reaches served as refuges for cold-adapted species, isolating populations long enough for new species to evolve. When the ice retreated, those species remained -- stranded on a tropical sky island, surrounded by lowland forest with which they share almost nothing in common.