1 August 2007 Carstensz Pyramid. The Seventh Summit.
At 3am on 3 August Sam, Dave and Wim (the usual suspects) plus myself and Kees t Hooft arrived at our base camp at c.4200m, Papua.
For Dave and Sam Carstensz Pyramid [1] would be the eighth of the seven summits[2]. Unfortunately Doug Beal, a long term member of our team was not able to join us this time.
It was raining, and though Dave described it as a soft rain (I believe hard rain is known as hail to us Europeans, but David is a Californian; they have their own linguistic imagery). It was cold and a slight breeze added to the general air of misery tainted with anticipation. We had seen only mist slowly swirling round the rocks and ponds on the trail up to our camp. Occasionally the full moon flitted between the clouds. Somewhere up there was our target wrapped up in unknown joys and dangers.
The next morning, umbrellas in hand, our little team set out for Ngga Pulu, the second highest summit in Australasia. As the rain and mists began to clear the bogs and wet cliffs brought memories of our homely, lovely Cairngorms. Scotland, the land of soft rain I suppose. Our local guide had pointed in the general direction of the mountain. As Edward Whymper once said; 'guides are mere pointers out of paths', in this case literally.
The path was not obvious, but here and there cairns left by earlier parties led first to a narrow corridor, an eroded trench, then a false summit that turned out to be a shoulder leading to a surprising equatorial glacier. The rock here was limestone and had petrified sludge marks, fossilised remains of the scouring from the receding ice cap. There used to be three glacier systems in the Sudirman Range, now there are just two [3]. Next to the glacial hump we found a rocky peak marked with a home made metal ice axe. In the mist and cloud it it looked like this was the highest point on the mountain. Just 50 metres lower than the top of Carstensz, Ngga Pulu was good for for acclimatisation.
It rained as we descended under our flock of umbrellas. In base we sat under an old blue tarp and ate a supper of cold chicken nuggets and rice in pools of head-torch light.
Two events took place at six am the next morning; it stopped raining and dawn, having no choice, arrived.
Carstensz Pyramid is not really a pyramid, more a series of whale back ridges and steep limestone walls either side. On the North side it presents a a series of glistening wet slabs seamed with eroded grooves where they overlap. The trail to the base of the wall was well marked and led to one of these grooves. An old fixed rope pointed the way. The first eight or so rope lengths followed a ramp leading up and right which in turn led to a narrow gully and then, by pitch twelve, a wide sandy glacis above which a one hundred metre wall of cliffs guarded the summit ridge. Pitch fifteen had rough, sharp edged holds and reached the ridge.
A few minutes of wandering along the easy ridge brought us to the main obstacle of the climb, a six metre deep brèche. Some-one had left a Tyrolean rope in place.
Peering through the mist at the anchors on the far side, I could not be sure if the slings wrapped round sharp limestone edges were fraying or not. How long had the slings been there? Had the equatorial sun corroded the nylon? Was it nylon even?
After a short discussion we agreed to rappel down the gap and climb up again on the far side. It began to snow gently. There were two more small brèches before the short scramble to the summit, where it was beginning to snow more heavily. We found two small plaques there, one a memorial to a group of young Indonesians and (slightly alarmingly) the other was for Brimob, the armed wing of the Indonesian police force. [4]
On the way down the snow turned into heavy rain, the grooves into into waterways and the rock climb into a river canyon. Rapping down, the water streamed through through our clothing and filled our boots till they squelched water out with each step. The descent was rather slow, rappelling one at a time. The feeling of relief when we passed the last rope and were able to get under the shelter of the umbrellas for the walk home. It was a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted I guess. It was just above freezing. By now I was suffering from uncontrollable shakes, cold and soaking wet. Back at the camp I crawled into my sleeping bag with the wet clothes on, hoping that things would dry out during the night. On the nylon of the damp tent a miserable and wet mosquito was eyeing me. Looking at the bent head, set an an angle from the thorax, I think it was an Anopheles. I had read that in Papua, all four forms of Malaria are present and resistant. I had also read that the friendly Anopheles vectors other ghastly diseases too. I fell asleep hoping the insect was too miserable and cold to need a blood meal, or that it was a male.
Forty hours later the team was in Kuta, Bali, soft surf rolling across the horizon. The sun shone, the water was warm, the beer cold. Life could hardly have taken a better turn.
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Ngga Pulu 4852m
S.04°04.045'
E.137°11.299'
Carstensz 4887m
S.04°04.729'
E.137°09.557'
Base Camp 4280m
S.04°04.729'
E.137°09.557'
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[1]Puncak Jaya (IPA: /'pʊn.tʃæk 'dʒaɪ.ɔ/), sometimes called Mount Carstensz or the Carstensz Pyramid, is the highest mountain on the island of New Guinea, on the Australia-New Guinea continent and in Oceania. It is the highest point between the Himalayas and the Andes and the highest island peak in the world. The peak is located in what is variously called the Sudirman Range or the Dugunduguoo, in the western central highlands of Papua, the Indonesian western half of the island, and is the highest peak in the country.
[2] The seventh is either Mount Kosciuszko, 2228m, Snowy Mountains on the Australian mainland or Carstensz in the Australasian continental plate. Sam and Dave have now climbed both; thus all 8 of the 7 summits!
[3]http://www.easternsnow.org/proceedings/2004/kincaid_and_klein.pdf#search='meren%20glacier'
[4] One of the oldest Indonesian National Police units was the Mobile Brigade (AKA Brimob), formed in late 1945. It was originally assigned the tasks of disarming remnants of the Japanese Imperial Army and protecting the chief of state and the capital city. It fought in the revolution, and its troops took part in the military confrontation with Malaysia in the early 1960s and in the conflict in East Timor in the mid-1970s. In 1981 the Mobile Brigade spawned a new unit called the Explosive Ordnance Devices Unit.
In 1992 the Mobile Brigade was essentially a paramilitary organization trained and organized on military lines. It had a strength of about 12,000. The brigade was used primarily as an elite corps for emergencies, aiding in police operations that required units to take quick action. The unit was employed in domestic security and defence operations and was issued special riot-control equipment. Elements of the force were also trained for airborne operations.
For the alternative view of Indonesian politics see John Pilger http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=38
