The Route

I arrive in Denpasar Bali at 3:20 pm on July 1 after traveling for 22 hours. As my flight to Timika does not leave until 2:15am I will spend the next 11 hours killing time around the airport in a jet-lagged stupor. There is an executive lounge, but one must be traveling first class (I am not) and be "invited" by the airline (they haven't). I will probably check my gear and find a bench or piece of floor to sleep on.


The 2nd and 3rd of July are spent resting and packing as the team comes together in Timika. I just received word we will be an expedition of 12 climbers! We fly from Timika to Ilaga on July 4th, then trek 2 hours to a tea house that will serve as our staging area. Over the following 5 days we will trek from elevation 2,286 feet to Carstensz base camp at 12,500. 

 Much of this trek is through jungle. It will be hot and muddy. We will be wearing rubber boots. By the time this expedition is over we will have trekked 70 miles in rubber boots. This is what my boots look like

They are Cabella Wellingtons. I wore them today while using my pressure washer. They performed well, which is to say my feet stayed dry. This is a very good start. 

Next I would show you a map of the trekking route, but Google images let me down. I was hoping for an aerial photo with a dotted line marking the path. This is all I could find.  Clearly we will need the help of locals. 

The team should make its summit attempt on or about July 11th. This is done in one shot. We start climbing with headlamps in the middle of the night, reach the summit at 16,024 feet and return back to base camp where celebratory pats on the back abound. Here is a great dotted line picture of the summit attempt route. 

Look at those dots. That is a great dotted line picture. I am not sure why the dots change color. It seems possible this indicates the places where fixed-line protection is used.  I will find out when I get there, though I don't expect there will be any actual dots.