A 20% experience

Top of Welirang Gunung

The ridge that leads to the Welirang peak

Chopin's Nocturne on my ipod, train's rumbling noise in the background along with sporadic cries from an adorable baby fill my ears as we head from Surabaya to Yogjakarta in Indonesia. Two burst sores on the left foot and several hidden ones on the right, a bit of sore on the unused skin of my shoulders and in common one word can describe properly what is present at several parts of my body - pain. Yet a sense of happiness lies in my head, a sense of pride - a reason for which or may be several lay inside my DSLR.

Sulfur vents on the surface of volcano

A flood of thoughts rushed into my head as soon as I pulled my book to write something for the first time on this trip. There was no respite so far, for four days everything happened quite quickly. The experiences - each setting limits beyond the previous ones. The first glimpse of a volcano with sunrise in the background and clouds rushing against it as if they were waves [video]. A first glimpse of a beautiful lake in the middle of a crater with sulfur fumes dancing on the green surface. But somehow the latest experience is what took the first place to be penned down, perhaps because of the signs on my body or the feeling of awe - it left me with.

The title probably suggests the most impressive part of the 24-hour-2-segment trek. We started right next to the Tanjung plaza hotel in Tretes[880 m] with a motivation to scale an active volcano named welirang. Now, the planning for this trip actually never happened for several reasons. For Indonesia, all we had were the plane tickets and a skeletal itinerary. So a 2-day hike had to happen at some unheard place before. We gathered some information about possible peaks and finally picked Welirang. But we did not know anything about the heights or durations. All we could gather are a few sentences from lonely planet and some extremely horrible estimates about time and distance. Trust me, people here are hopeless in this sense - the hotel manager even suggested a 75 KM hike in 3 hours.

On the way to the top

So finally packing our bags close to 10 KGs, we started at around 5:30 AM from the hotel. There was a bit of registration at the national park. The funny story begins here, this specific hike is basically an upward sloped hike for the whole path, from the point where we start all the way up to the summit. Usually we have hikes where there are some horizontal stretches, even some downward slopes. But this one had none! So, not an impressive speed but a consistent one for around five and a half hours took us to the base camp at approximately 2500 m at a distance of mere 8.5 KM from the starting point. We borrowed one of the extra huts from the sulfur miners, put some grass inside and on top of it to make it rain proof. The plan is to sleep from 5.30 PM to 1.30 AM and go for the summit.

The conditions changed rapidly, there was rain at the base camp with lightning and thunders at a distance visible straight from the huts. It could be quite far, but the continuous rain made it hard for me to sleep. I gathered around 2 hours of sleep and we started for the hike at around 3 AM. It was quite a spooky summit attempt - there is no light, in the middle of woods and all we could see was the diffused light from the occasional lightnings behind the volcano.

The view from the top

Approximately two hours later we reached the summit at a height of 3154 m, so far the highest we reached in Indonesia and probably will remain the highest for this trip. We reached there just before sunrise with the intentions of grabbing amazing views and some good pictures. But we had a surprise in store when we reached the peak.

The lightnings were right infront of us! From where we stood, on the right hand side we had the sunrise with several of famous volcanoes in the foreground and on the left side was the crater where fuming sulfur deposits were present. And straight infront of us were massive clouds with occasional lightning. The feeling we had, apart from cold for being uprepared, is pretty much indescribable.  As the sun slowly came up the textures became clear, so did the the colors in the crater. It was incredible, the feeling of just us being out there in a completely exposed situation. The hike up was worth it!

Close up of a sulfur vent

Then we went down to where the sulfur miners work. There are several vents on the surface of the volcano with incredible colors, steaming sulfur fumes out of them. The sight was amazing, but the fumes were hostile. It is not pleasant to have them in the face for more than a few seconds. We tried to grab some pictures whenever the winds played on our side.  It is quite fascinating to see how accustomed these miners are to the fumes.

The descent was pretty fast taking less than 3 hours. The worst part was that the whole path was full of stones. Without any padding, anybody with some hiking experience knows very well that it's a pain. In all, the title describes everything aptly - a 20% slope all the way.

The accomplishment picture