I recently took a trip to scale the 2nd tallest mountain in Indonesia. The idea was actually that of a friend of mine from the London office. Chris and his girlfriend were travelling Indonesia for two weeks and this was one of their stops. Nat and I flew down for a long weekend to meet up with them and to take part in the 3 day guided trek up the 3,726 meter (12,224 ft) volcano.
Our trip started with a flight in to Bali's airport late at night, and a quick night's sleep in a rather sketchy room that we luckily found with the help of a "local" at 12:30am. We were up 5 hours later to catch a bus to a boat to another bus to our destination on the island of Lombok. To make a long story short, it was quite a journey due to some confusion at the transport office, but we eventually made it 2 hours across the choppy sea to the island of Lombok which sits directly east of Bali.
Once we got to Lombok, we got a ride to our hotel where our friends were also booked for the night. We had a full day planned of sitting by the amazing beaches and renting some surf boards, but unfortunatley the weather had some other plans. After Nat and I grabbed some lunch and then caught up with our friends by the pool, the clouds decided to rain. And rain. And then pour. It didn't stop us from having a nice stroll on the beach in between storms and eventually enjoying a swim in the ocean during the pouring rain. It was pretty refreshing!
The next morning we were up before dark again to catch a van with our trek guide to the trailhead for our 3-day hiking and camping adventure. Our guide's name was Abdul and he spoke very good English. About two hours later we made it to the trailhead where the office for John's Adventures, our guide's company, was with a hearty breakfast of fruit and pancakes waiting for us! We enjoyed breakfast with excellent views of the volcano and the valley below.
Our hike started at 601 meters (nearly 2000 feet) at the National Park Entrance where Abdul registered our hike for 3 days. The trail got steep pretty quick and we stopped for a few rests, including a nice lunch break. Each rest stop took place at a small open hut which provided a nice place to sit and take our packs off our back. Fortunately, our guided trek came with a guide and 4 additional porters! The porters carried all of the gear provided by John's Adventures, including tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pad, cooking gear, all food, and 3 liters of bottled water per person per day. We felt pretty humbled watching our local porters fly by us with their heavy load wearing flip flops!! During the late afternoon, we reached a small ridge where we were suddenly surrounded by monkeys! Most of them were common grey macaque monkeys, but we were also very happy to spot 3 very rare black ebony leaf monkeys.
Due to a slightly late start because of a religious celebration, we didn't quite make it to the usual camp for the night. Instead, we stopped at a rest spot at an elevation of 2000 meters (6500 feet) and our porters set up camp for us. The camp was right at treeline and we enjoyed some amazing views of the evening and sunset.
We were up at sunrise on the 2nd day of our hike to climb our final push to the volcano's crater rim. The rim is at an elevation of 2461 meters (8000 feet). The crater of Mt. Rinjani is very similar to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. The huge crater is filed with a lake, and used to be part of a much larger volcano itself. After many violent eruptions, the entire mountain blew apart leaving a giant crater filled with a gigantic lake and a mini Volcano, know as "Rinjani's Child" in local speak. This mini volcano is still very active and last erupted in May! It still steams from the top, and has a number of active steam vents on it's edges as well. Once we reached the crater rim, we climbed down into the crater toward the lake and Rinjani's child. It was a long steep hike, but once we got to the lake, our porters prepared us lunch which we enjoyed the natural hot springs in a large pool fed by a waterfall. It felt amazing. Of course I had to take a dip in the freezing lake after lunch as well!
The food the porters and guide prepared for us was pretty amazing considering they had to carry everything up and prepare it on a fire made from wood collected in the jungle. Breakfast included tomato and cheese jaffles (sandwich), fried banana fritters, and banana pancakes on the last day! Lunch consisted of soupy noodles with vegetables and a boiled egg, along with some rice. Dinner included a variety of fried rice with vegetables, fried potatoes, a chicken leg, a fried egg and a giant prawn cracker. All meals included fresh cut pineapple and bananas. We ate like kings and were always happy with every meal.
After lunch and a long break at the hot springs and lake, we had to hike out of the crater and back up to another part of the rim below the summit to camp for the night. Most of our hike involved a steady rain and fog. We were actually hiking through the clouds as we reached our camp at 2700 meters (8800 feet). The hike was long and extremely steep, so we were very happy to reach our camp. Unfortunatley, it was pretty wet and we were entirely fogged in so there wasn't much to see. I was able to snap few pics before dinner and an early bed time.
On our final day, we were up for even an early start at 2:30am! In order to reach the summit and have good views, and enough time, we had to start before dark. This enabled us to reach the summit at sunrise before the clouds had a chance to move in. We slowly but steadily climbed the next 1000 meters (3300 feet) to the summit with our headlamps on and the stars shining. The temperature was around freezing and the wind was strong. At one point I got so cold, I reached in my pack to grab the last long sleeve shirt I had (after Nat took the rest) and threw it on in the dark. I later realized it was on backwards. As we approached our third hour of hiking in the dark, the trail kept getting steeper. For those of you who haven't climbed a volcano before, the rock is very small and unstable. It's almost like hiking up a sand dune, you take one step up and then slide a half step down. We slowly continued up the mountain, freezing cold and extremely tired. As we approached the last 20 minute push, the sun found it's way above the horizon to display an amazing array of colors and a spectacular view of the east coast of the island. Nat and I finally reached the top with our guide, and about 10 minutes later our friends made it as well! Nat was the first girl to summit that day and after our friends arrived, whatever clouds that were around completely cleared which gave us incredible views of the entire island, the crater lake and mini volcanco, the slopes of Rinjani, and even other Indonesian islands including Bali in the distance.
I can't say enough how amazing the views from the top were. After a freezing, yet adrenaline-numbed 30 minutes on the summit, we started our descent back down to camp where breakfast was waiting. In less than half the time it took us to climb up, we were back at camp having enjoyed the warm sun and more amazing views on the way down.
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After breakfast, we felt like we had already done a day's worth of hiking, but unfortunately it was the last day of our trek which meant we had to continue descending the mountain all the way back down to our endpoint, a different trailhead at an elevation of 1156 meters (3800 feet). That's a 2120 meter (7000 feet) descent in one afternoon!!!! One week later, I still can't feel one of my big toes for some reason (no joke). The main thing we all noticed was that the topography, landscape and forests on the way up were very different than they were on the other side of the mountain on the way down. It was great to see so many different types of landscape and jungle.
We finally made it back to our hotel that night and enjoyed an amazing meal on the beach before we hit the sack, completely beat and tired from our mountain trek. The next morning we enjoyed some breakfast at the hotel before catching a boat back to Bali where we enjoyed the beach and pool for one last afternoon before heading back to Singapore the next day. To be honest, we were pretty disappointed with Bali, especially compared to Lombok. But I guess we didn't stay in any fancy resorts.
Overall, the trip was amazing. I would definitely do it again and recommend it to anyone else. I have also started making a list of other volcanoes and treks that I would like to conquer while I'm here. So don't worry, there are many more adventures to come!
