Climbing Carstensz Pyramid
Summit Day
The summit climb began at 1 A.M. when we woke up and threw on our gear and did a one-hour hike to the base of Carstensz Pyramid. I was extremely happy to see the night full of stars with not a single cloud. When we reached the base of Carstensz Pyramid, we ditched our trekking poles and took out our technical gear. This is where I saw the first rope dangling vertically in the cold night. After the first climber going up sent an annoying shower of scree and small to medium sized rocks raining down, we decided to allow each climber to completely ascend the rope before the next would start. This ended up putting a lot of distance in between us so we were basically ascending without anyone in view.
Some parts of the climb didn’t require the use of ropes, and we could briefly group together again. For the most part though, we were climbing alone on our own strength. The grip here is excellent regardless if it is dry or wet. Just be prepared to deal with some serious exposure, so if you’re not confident in climbing or have a fear of heights then you won’t do well here! Below is a shot I took of one of my other team members climbing under me.
A few hours later the sun came up and then I could finally see the views around me. Since I had been deep in thick vegetation this entire trip, this was actually the first time I was getting any kind of good views. Above is a photo looking down of a steep section of scree I had just climbed. After I took this photo I turned around and continued ascending when I suddenly slipped but was saved by my rope. I looked down and for the first time on this trip I saw myself surrounded by ice.
With daylight back I was surprised by how well I could see the infamous Freeport Mine. This mine is the largest gold and copper mine in the world, and it is even visible from space! It’s run by an American company and is the single largest tax payer to the Indonesian government. The mine is a big reason why there is so much unrest on the island. The West Papuans feel they are left uneducated and poor while the profits from the mine are sent elsewhere. Access through the mine for climbers is prohibited, but if you take the helicopter you’ll be dropped off close by it, or about a 15 minute hike from base camp. Some of those who ran into desperate situations on the mountain have tried to cross through the mind only to be arrested, and supposedly one group even was murdered! You’d think it would be a safe place to visit, but because of corruption and unrest it’s actually a dangerous place.
The first half of the climb is spent ascending the vertical face of Carstensz Pyramid. The photo above shows the final ascent on the face, which puts you on the summit ridge. Going up the entire face was never difficult technically or physically, so I can’t use the word challenging, so I’ll just say this last vertical section was the most enjoyable.
Once you’re on the Shark Fin, you’re very exposed and you’ll need to negotiate for several hours on your way to the summit. At this point some clouds were rolling in but we still had some excellent views from the summit ridge. Above is a shot I took of some other climbers on my expedition who had just reached the ridge.
With the clouds rolling in we were losing our rare blue skies and great views. Luckily I was able to see the glaciers on this nearby mountain before the clouds covered them up. This is probably the only place in Asia and one of the very few places in the world where you will find permanent ice almost directly on the Equator. Once there were enormous sheets of ice here and very few remain. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were completely gone within a decade based on how small they were when I saw them.
Not long after you enter the summit ridge you’ll approach the famous “gap” on Carstensz Pyramid. The gap is about 30 feet wide and sits over a several hundred foot drop. Climbing down and going back up would be dangerous and would take hours, so doing a Tyrolean traverse is the most ideal way to cross it. Above one of the members in our expeditions prepares the Tyrolean traverse for us.
Once the ropes were finished we crossed the gap by sliding across one by one. I found the scariest part of the gap was when I initially let go of everything and let the ropes take my weight. Once I felt the tension holding me up the actual crossing of the gap wasn’t so bad!
For some reason, I mistakenly believed that after the gap the summit was only 15 minutes away or so, but it was actually another hour or two. There were a few smaller gaps to cross, and without the Tyrolean available these were a bigger challenge. I met and became friends with Ricky Munday on this climb, who we ended up going up the summit ridge together. Above is him navigating around the second gap as I called it. This one required climbing down a few feet and then back up. We had to spend a minute to figure out how to cross it, but the trick was to ignore the ropes and climb down on the side of the rock and back up later. This way we were able to use the ropes above us for support and jump across the small gap.
By now we were around 16,000 feet (5,000 meters and getting close to the summit. Above is Ricky continuing up the ridge. It always looked like we were several feet from the summit but the climb just kept going. Unlike most mountains I’ve done, this climb wasn’t exhausting where each step was torture, we were actually enjoying every minute of it.
All the way to the top, we continued to climb false summits like these seen above and below. In my opinion, the most dramatic gap was created by two sheer walls facing each other but were bridged together by a large boulder. After jumping down onto the boulder I looked underneath me and all I could see was sky and clouds. To get back off the boulder on the other side required jumping up and pulling yourself onto another rock. Because the rock had extremely poor grip due to its shape, I thought this was the biggest technical challenge for me. It was a bit unnerving to jump up and grab on the rock, because if you lost your footing you’d certainly fall over the side and be hanging in the open air by your rope, assuming it saved you. Those on the expedition who had done Everest and some serious rock climbing gave it a pause and a short look and climbed it easily.
The false summits were the very last challenges we had. We got right below the summit just as thick clouds started to roll in. On the final steps to the summit there were no ropes, so in some ways this is the most dangerous part of the entire climb! I can’t say how incredibly happy I was once I reached the top of Carstensz Pyramid! This was one of those places I felt like it might never reach for some strange reason. It was a victory I truly needed, and I strangely felt like a heavy life burden was off my shoulders.
The photo above is myself on the summit on November 2nd. I’m holding a small banner I made for my best friend Kaleb Curtzwiler who took his own life about a year and a half before the climb. He was a great friend who was extremely fit and full of adventure. When I began to train for Carstensz Pyramid about two years ago by cycling and running, he often came with me. He was always better at everything I did and I don’t doubt he would have loved every minute of this climb so I dedicated it to him.
After the summit, we began our descent back into base camp. Going down was much more enjoyable than going up since you simply rappel down much of the mountain. The fog eventually turned into heavy rain stealing some of the fun out of rappelling. A few times I might as well been rappeling down waterfalls. Other times the rain was so heavy that when I’d rappel, the rope sliding through my figure-eight would cause the water to spray violently into my face. Some of these ropes were incredibly thick while others thin, so each section was different as far as speeds go. We went here at our own pace like we did on the way up, so I think most of us descended the mountain solo. It wasn’t until base camp that we were all back together again as a group.
Many people say once you reach a summit of a mountain you are only halfway done. In my opinion this isn’t always exactly true, but for Carstensz Pyramid it definitely a true statement. My blisters that happened early in this trek had become worse instead of healing. I was just rubbing off more skin every day while I stayed wet and cold; probably the worst possible conditions for an open wound. To get back to Sugapa, I had to pass through the highlands, meadows and rainforests with each step causing more pain. Plus the food still wasn’t really my taste, so I definitely wasn’t getting enough calories for the descent. Carstensz Pyramid seemed bitter at its defeat. Everyday on our retreat we had some of the hardest rain we had ever seen while in West Papua which added to our misery.
When I had been on the wall, I actually went down a wrong section and seriously had to rappel down using long grass growing off the mountain. I then lowered myself into especially deep mud that was the result from the rainstorm. Just a bit further and close to camp, a porter had collapsed from hypothermia. He was unconscious and brought into a tent with a large camp fire in the middle. They put a cigarette in his hand and after 20 minutes he woke up and began to smoke it. If he had collapsed on that steep decline then it would have been nearly impossible to carry him back down safely. The wall as I called it was difficult by yourself much less when you’re carrying someone.
When I had been on the wall, I actually went down a wrong section and seriously had to rappel down using long grass growing off the mountain. I then lowered myself into especially deep mud that was the result from the rainstorm. Just a bit further and close to camp, a porter had collapsed from hypothermia. He was unconscious and brought into a tent with a large camp fire in the middle. They put a cigarette in his hand and after 20 minutes he woke up and began to smoke it. If he had collapsed on that steep decline then it would have been nearly impossible to carry him back down safely. The wall as I called it was difficult by yourself much less when you’re carrying someone.
After reaching Camp IV the next day we did a very long trek all the way to Camp II through the meadows stopping at the top of the rainforest. I didn’t remember the trek from Camp II to Camp III being completely downhill on the way to Carstensz, but on the way back it seemed like we were climbing uphill non-stop for hours. It was one of those hikes were you think you’ll be able to spot your camp from the next peak. Instead we crossed the forested muddy ridge reaching peak after peak for hours until finally a steep decent took us all the way to Camp II just before nightfall.
The following day we trekked from Camp II all the way through the entire rainforest and jungle to Suanggama. This was a brutal day that left us soaking wet, muddy, and somehow feeling even more disgusting.
When we were in the outskirts of the village I realized I had left my headlamp in one of the tents so I had to share with another climber. The two of us somehow got off the trail and ended up going down a deep horrible ravine that was dangerously steep. We were both pretty damn tired by this point and the ravine was the last thing we needed. Since it was night time we weren’t exactly sure how to reach the village anymore. The climber I was with cursed constantly saying how this was madness and any wrong move we made would be the end of us. We were lucky when an hour later several headlamps appeared. Six children from the village who must have seen us going into the ravine came to our rescue. As we climbed back up to the village the kids swarmed around us barefoot going in and out of the bushes shining the light all the way back to camp. Getting saved by kids wasn’t exactly the honorable ending we wanted to our climb, but we were both really grateful they had come. Since we could see camp from a distance we would have eventually made it but it might have taken us hours longer if they hadn’t come and shown us the proper way.
Despite wasting so much time in the ravine, our guides and cook still hadn’t made it back to camp. Several hours later, our cook exited the rainforest in a psychotic state pointing to his head and screamed the word “gas” over and over. We were told he was hallucinating. Sleep was terrible because we were extremely dirty and wet. Dogs barked, chickens bocked, and pigs screamed all throughout the night. At two in the morning, the lead guide made it to camp after a solo 18-hour trek through the rain forest. I can’t even begin to imagine how horrible that must have been.
The next day we did a sweltering two hour trek from Suanggama back to Sugapa. It was nice to be back into relative civilization again. Of course there were no showers here so the best we could do was put on our least contaminated clothing and attempt to sleep. In Sugapa we stayed in a hut, and I climbed to the top floor thinking that I would be safe from the strange things that might return again during the night. Shortly after I laid down and turned off my headlamp to sleep I heard shouting and the walls being slapped below. After I heard, “it went through the roof” I knew I was not alone and that it was time to move my sleeping bag downstairs with everyone else.
The conditions were not much better downstairs and we had a one hour battle against giant cockroaches. We used shoes, deet, and other creative weapons until we gave up and passed out from exhaustion. One of the climbers attempted to make a ring of deet around his sleeping bag, and I slept with a shirt around my head in an effort to avoid being touched. At three in the morning, I heard him frantically pumping deet and envisioned a horde of roaches approaching our sleeping bags. Despite my hatred for roaches, at this point I was too tired to move or care.
When morning came we flew back to Nabire where we each received a hotel room in order to clean up. I probably drank two liters of soda that day and spent hours cleaning myself and all of my gear. Of the six climbers on this trip, three had completed Mt. Everest and two had now finished the Seven Summits. While we couldn’t decide how hard we’d compare Carstensz Pyramid to the rest of the Seven Summits, we finally did agree that of the seven this is the one we’d least like to return to!
