Java's highest peak Semeru only needs climbing once

By Jeff Barrus

MALANG, East Java (JP): When setting out on any climb, it is wise to pay attention to the faces of the returning. I'd just left the sunny, thin-air vegetable village of Ranu Pani inside East Java's Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park to climb Mount Semeru, Java's highest peak. I'd gazed up at this great smoking cone every day for more than two years, dreaming of the moment I'd stand on top of it.

My pack was full but light on my shoulders. Finally, I was on my way. Then three climbers passed me in the other direction, heading back to Ranu Pani. They looked like my Manichean opposites. Their faces were dull with fatigue and dust. They shuffled by like prisoners on a forced march, lumbering under the burden of their depleted packs. It should have been my first clue as to what lie ahead.

There were five of us: Aloysius, Vhonte, Mawardi, Wayan and myself, an American, their English teacher. Vhonte was the only real mountaineer among us and thus our guide.

It would take three days to reach the peak. The first day we walked from Ranu Pani to the alpine lake of Ranu Kumbolo. The trail was an easy incline that cut in and out of several small valleys as it worked through the smaller mountains bubbled up beneath Semeru. There was a lovely view of Java's southern coastline far below. We passed through tree ferns, wild palms and wet thickets of inkberries. The ground was spongy humus, soft underfoot. It took us less than four hours on our fresh legs to make it to the lake.

Ranu Kumbolo sat in a crater ringed by shaggy pine trees and reflected a silvery blue in the twilight. Many hikers go only as far as this beautiful lake, pitching their tents in a cluster beside the water. Here I saw teenagers that made Wayan seem as prepared as an Everest outfitter. They wore flip-flops and shorts, and burned stacks of scavenged twigs trying to keep warm. We ourselves had no tent and so spent the night inside a wooden shelter erected for the unprepared. By nightfall it was North- American-dead-of-winter cold. The dark shelter was smoky with kretek lit by another group of climbers huddled across the room. I slept on a wooden platform that had collapsed at one end, leaving my head slightly lower than my feet, which induced strange dreams.

We woke before dawn to the sound of one devout climber calling out for the first prayer of the day. We drank coffee beside the steaming lake. I made instant oatmeal and advertised it to my students, none of whom had tried it before, as bubur londo. After breakfast, we took a bracingly cold dip in the lake.

The second day was harder. We hiked a full day from Ranu Kumbolo to Arcopodo, a base camp on the lower slopes of Semeru. The trail climbed steeply before descending into a large open basin that reminded me of the Montana grasslands. There was so much open space and no one sharing it with us, and I thought, sometimes mountains are like another country. The sun was still low and the sky pale blue as we crossed. A breeze bent and matted the tall grass in front of us.

I invoked my "old man" privileges and stopped to rest just inside a dry upland forest. We sat on a fallen log and ate salted hardboiled eggs, which many mountain Javanese believe bring good luck on a climb. With Ranu Kumbolo, the last source of water on the trail, behind us, we had resolved to drink sparingly. What we were carrying would have to last two days.

We arrived in Kalimati, the second campsite on the trail, around noon. From here we could see Semeru's perfect cone looming rocky and bald above us.

Smoke and ash

Every 15 minutes or so it erupted in a massive, soundless cloud of white smoke and ash. A group of climbers from Bandung shared fire-charred sweet potatoes with us. I collapsed in the powdery dust beside a sage plant and slept on my back in the sun. Wayan had a headache from altitude and sunshine. Mawardi, nearly as sweaty as myself, bore the distant expression of a man in rough surroundings dreaming of a girl. Aloysius, his mouth finally run dry, was swilling water like a rescued castaway. Only Vhonte acted like this mountain climbing was something one did for enjoyment. He looked as if he worked in an air-conditioned office a hundred meters away and had decided to skip up the mountain on his lunch break.

From Kalimati the trail crossed a wash and climbed steeply up dry stairs made of ironwood tree roots another two or three hours to Arcopodo. That night we slept in a nest of cut grass and dry pine boughs. We woke the next morning at 2 a.m -- time enough to make the peak by sunrise and get off before 10 o'clock when the winds change direction and blow deadly sulfurous gases down on climbers. I was wearing six layers of clothing, a knit ninja hood and gloves, and was still cold. Wayan was in jeans and a light jacket.

The stars, usually yellowish and far-off in the lowlands of Java, were like brilliant white fires at this altitude. We left the timberline almost immediately and started climbing up steep rock fissures filled with loose volcanic scree. Our feet slipped so often that we frequently had to crawl on hands and knees. For every ten steps forward it seemed we had to draw a hundred breaths to get enough rarefied oxygen into our lungs. And every exhalation misted up in front of our mouths -- an incongruous sight anywhere in Indonesia. We stopped talking altogether. Whenever the dust settled, I could see the flashlights of climbers above and below us moving in a slow straight line like some kind of midnight processional.

We lost against the sun. It rose while we were still crawling upward. I didn't care. Making the peak and going home were my only goals now. Then, just when the urge to sleep in the scree had settled on me like a devil's temptation, the ground miraculously stopped rising. I looked up from my feet and saw the flat lunar top of Semeru and the Indonesian flag planted in a pile of rocks. I threw my arms around my students in a very unrestrained Western celebration. Mawardi kissed the ground. Aloysius howled his happiness just as the volcano sent up another cloud of ash and mustard-scented smoke in the background. We happily let the icy winds whip over us as we stood at 3,676 meters and stared across Java -- from Mount Lawu in the west to the Bali Straits in the east.

Beside the flag was a small plaque. All along the route we had seen such memorials for climbers who had -- usually for reasons of sickness, accident, dehydration, overexposure or stupidity -- not left Semeru. Vhonte said half a dozen climbers a year died trying to get to this place. I was grateful I could now look up at this mountain from my comfortable home in Malang knowing I had stood on its top. And I wanted to savor this feeling. I couldn't imagine coming back here again. Once was enough.