Java's highest peak Semeru only needs climbing once
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.