My latest mountain climb....

By Deanne Whitfield s17
Curtin University of Technology
See Deanne's photos

I flew from Yogya to Lombok Island and my friends Nic and Bec flew there from Malang. You see, we planned a little 'get away' trip before our exams. We have all been researching our asses off and we were sick of the traffic and pollution of the cities we live in, so we decided to get away for a week to get some fresh air, time out and a bit of perspective. So we decided to go and climb Mount Rinjani (3,726m), the second highest mountain in Indonesia. Not very relaxing you might say, but we thought it would be a great challenge….and IT INDEED WAS. I have NEVER done ANYTHING as physically and mentally challenging as that in my whole life…it was so EXHAUSTING.

We got to Lombok, and had a 3hr drive up to the base camp. Slept there overnight, then got up at 6am the next morning, had breakfast and after a briefing about the climb, started our 3day adventure at 7.30 that morning. It took us all day to get to the crater rim (3,000m) and we walked through thick dark jungle, being eyed-off by monkeys in the trees. The guide said "look, they are looking at you because you are white, its like entertainment for them". After a long and puffy jungle trek, the scenery changed and the landscape became a mass of big black rock slopes. Lava from the past had cooled and had grass growing in spots. By 5pm we got to the crater rim and camped there overnight. Below us was the inside of the crater, about a couple of hundred meters down and there was a HUGE lake and inside the lake was a volcano. Amazing scenery. The only way I can describe it is like this - imagine a big dessert bowl and it is half filled with custard and then in the middle of the custard is a piece of fruit cake jutting out…..that's what it was like.

The next day we started to climb down the inside of the crater toward the lake on the inside. It was a fairly sheer drop and we were struggling to get down with our heavy backpacks. We had one guide and two porters (guys that carry all the food, tents etc). They carried the supplies using a long bamboo pole with the gear tied to each end. Included were two live chickens, tied by their feet and dangling from the bamboo poles, "bok-bokking" all the way up the mountain, getting a free ride and unaware that they would become our dinner on the second night. The porters wore rubber thongs and climbed and descended the mountain with double the speed of any of us.

We got down to the lake and then the scenery was like an alpine scene. There were pines trees everywhere and we could see the red dirt volcano across the lake. We had to walk another hour around the lake's edge before we got to a check-point where we were able to rest. When we got there, the porters and guide got busy cooking lunch and making tea. The three of us conked out and fell asleep on the ground because we hadn't slept at all the night before. The three of us were crammed in a small tent, sleeping almost on top of each other. The length of the tent came up to my shins so we had to sleep with our knees up……pain, pain, pain after a full day of climbing.

So by lunchtime we were sleeping stretched out on the ground in our own space until we were woken by the porters and given lunch. I must admit, for that far up a mountain, the guys certainly cooked us some yummo food. Over the 3 days we enjoyed stir-fried noodles, fried rice, vegetable soup, omelette, banana pancake, hot teas and of course, fried chicken (no more "bok-bok"). After lunch we left our stuff at the check-point and walked down to the hot springs. Waterfalls of yellow mineral water cascaded into rock pools. Many people make the trip to these particular hot springs because the water is famed to have many healing properties and can heal many skin and arthritic illnesses. We had to walk down stream a bit because the first few rock pools were boiling. You could actually see the bubbles and water bubbling away like a big pot of mustard coloured soup. The guide told us that if we swam in that we would be "tourist soup". We found a cooler rock pool further down stream and spent some time sitting in the warm water and allowing our legs some recovery time. You could feel the heat from the rocks below your feet…they were very hot and this rock pool was itself bubbling a little bit in places.

After our relaxing natural hot bath, we climbed back to the rest point, collected our gear and started to climb up the inside of the crater to the other side. We were heading for the highest peak on the mountain, which was on the other side of the crater rim. The porters left before us and we trudged along with our guide. It was really hard going and he had warned us about it in the first place. A lot of people get to the hot springs and turn back because they get too tired but we were determined to push on. So we climbed the inside of the crater all afternoon…it was SO hard. We already had buggered legs, our muscles were worn out and it was harder to breathe because of the cold air. We were bloody hot while climbing but as soon as we stopped for a breather and quick sip of water, the sweat on our backs became very cold and gave us chills, so we had to just keep plodding along. We got to the top rest point about 5pm and the porters were already up there, had the tents up and were boiling us some tea…..amazing little buggers.

In the morning the clouds hadn't quite formed thickly and we could see the lake still below. We were sitting on the edge of a cliff drinking our tea and a huge eagle came soaring up from below. It didn't see us until it came over the rim and then it got scared and quickly jerked around and flew back down. Monkeys came up from the slope below us and tried to steal our food and bags. It was so funny because we were just sitting there and these monkeys started coming over the cliffs and were standing up on their legs and peering around as if to say "ok, now, what do you have for us?" We had to chase them away and they just ran along the cliff edges.

Then we were told that we had to descend and that it would take the whole day and that it would be very hard, so we had to make sure that we still had some mountain water and we set off, with the porters racing ahead of us of course. The climb down was like hell again. We were slipping with almost every step because the track was like dried clay with pebbles on the top and we couldn't grip and would just go sliding and stack it on all the pebbles. I had to wear knee bandages for support because I thought my knee caps were going to pop off. We rested for lunch and then it began to rain…..great. But actually we were pretty lucky to not have had rain the 2 days before, so it was ok to have it on the way home. We were wearing rain ponchos and the porters didn't have any ponchos so they asked us if we had any spare plastic bags, so we gave them some bags and they tied them around their heads. So funny, the rest of their body was getting drenched but they were trying to keep their heads dry…poor guys. Anyway, by now the scenery had changed to rolling hills of shoulder high grass. I felt like I was in an American Indian prairie. It was just never ending long grass and we had to drudge through it in the never ending rain.

We saw a jungle up ahead and got excited because we were heading for a village to get a truck back to the base camp. So when we saw the jungle we thought, "cool, no more long grass, beyond this jungle must be the village". ….THEN, on the other side MORE prairie grass……NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! It went on forever and ever, with no sight of another jungle, so we had to keep plodding on through the long grass and rain. The porters were no-where in sight. They had obviously raced on way ahead. We passed some lovely cows with massive wooden bells around their necks. Then we heard this gushing sound and we were like "whats that?", and we kept walking and got to this river crossing where the water was overflowing and gushing and flooding over these huge boulders because there had been a flash flood after all the rain and this was the point we were meant to cross the river. We were saying "no way" because it was like muddy rapids, you know, the kind you see on TV shows where people have tried to cross it and have ended up drowning. So we were freaking out and our guide got this long stick and was poking in the exploding river looking for rocks for us to stand on to get across and we were like "no way buddy, we ARE NOT doing that, it's TOO dangerous". But we were shivering and he explained that we would get hypothermia if we didn't get to the village soon and there was no where else to get across and that normally the river is a little stream that is ankle deep but due to the rain it had become a wild rapidy river. He ended up talking us into it. So he stood in the middle of the river on a rock and helped each of us across one by one. Now that I think of it, that was a friggin stupid thing to make us do…..what a NOBHEAD.

Anyway, we still had about 30minutes of walking to do through rice fields and we were wet and stuffed. We got to a small village and had to wait for about 40minutes for a truck to come and pick us up and take us back to base camp. So we had just spent 3 days climbing up one side of this huge mountain, climbing down on the inside of the crater, back up the inside on the other side, then all the way down the other side of the mountain…it was awesome…………..but not something I think I wanna do again..…..not for a while anyway.