Climbing Mt. Merapi

After booking an all-night bus from Jogja to Jakarta for the next afternoon, Jen and I decided that instead of sleeping, we should spend our last night in Jogja climbing the volcano Mt. Merapi. A local tour company picked us up at 10pm and drove us 2 hours to a small homestay at the base of volcano where we enjoyed a cup of coffee and met 2 other couples who were going to climb in our group—one from France, and another from Finland.

The air was a crisp 60 degrees or so as we set out walking through a heavy fog around 1am. One of the three Javanese guides headed our party, followed by Jen and I, the other couples, and the other two guides bringing up the rear. Though Mt. Merapi stands almost 9,000 ft, in the foggy night you can't see where you're heading, or how far you've come. There was no peek to be seen above—only a foggy black with our individual pale patches of trail ahead and the snake of other lights trailing behind. We walked in silence, climbing slowly but steadily up, with only the lead guide ahead of me singing softly to himself. I was starting to feel quite tired when the lead guide suggested a rest for a few minutes in a small clearing. Everyone had turned off their lights and each of the couples sat apart, huddled in their own few feet of dark. The fog had disappeared, it seemed, long ago, and a ruddy three-quarter moon was visible through the loose covering of trees. Jen heard movement in the bushes a few feet from us and my pale, dying headlamp revealed two small shining eyes peering out of the bushes, disappearing a moment later with a rustle.

The trail became both rougher and steeper when we set out again. Though my light could distinguish the trail from its sides, it was difficult to find firm foot placements and I slid unsteadily several times. My high spirits from the first break dampened with each indistinguishable step, and my mind began to dull with the effort. Sustained exertion can be surprisingly mental—convincing yourself at each moment to keep moving. With nothing but silence and night, there isn't much to focus on, as the French hikers would later tell me, except your thighs. The lights trailing behind me began to space out further and further. My pace became too slow to mark the tempo for the songs my mind used to drive my steps. Just at the point I felt I had to ask the head guide to rest, he announced “1 or 2 minutes”.

During this break, we could see thousands of twinkling lights far below us, extending into the distance. It was like looking down from an airplane that's just dropped below the cloud line, foregrounded by the silhouette of a row of tree trunks.

The fresh feeling I had setting out from our first break lasted less than a minute when we continued our ascent. At times, the trail abandoned switch backs entirely and simply climbed straight up, requiring us to pull ourselves up using slim trunks, roots, and the occasional rocky outgrowth. My mind long ago lost the energy for music, as I now mentally counted off each step, repeating at every hundred. I made an effort to pace myself; not falling behind the lead guide, but by trying to relax in the extra bits of time at the edges between steps, previously overlooked by my forward straining. A second time I felt myself so tired that without a rest I couldn't go any further and resolved to call to the guide. But, again, before I could do so he stopped at another small clearing, waiting for everyone to catch up and rest.

We continued in this way for several more marches. The trail became steeper still though, and our rests more and more frequent. The trail had left its dirt behind and now alternated between slabs of large rough stone, shallow coverings of fist-sized porous rock, and gravel. We had also left behind convenient clearings—for our rests we simply paused in place, squatting along the rocky wall of our climb; vertically scattered by 15 feet or more. Though it was still too hot to wear a jacket as we climbed, it was now too cold to be stopped without one. The lights in the distance below coalesced into a dense and delicate web which our guide told us was the city of Solo.

Finally the trail flattened along a windy ridge. Above us, we could still see the silhouette of the final peek. Our guide told us it was 4am. The trail disappeared entirely when we reached the base, and our guide chose a snaking path up through the volcanic scree. We slowly and carefully scrambled upwards for almost an hour. We now had to place our feet carefully, and often dislodged a small slide of porous stones anyway. As our path became steeper, it was frequently necessary to use our hands on the sharp rocks. Despite the cold wind, the air was filled with the harsh smell of sulfur, and vents released a steady flow of hot steam around us as we climbed. I thought about book 3 of Lord of the Rings.

We pulled ourselves to the top around 10 minutes before dawn. Looking East from the summit, we had a 180-degree view of a vast ocean of clouds below us, with a small mountain peeking through them in the distance. To the south, a sickly yellow wall of steaming, sulfurous rock, and to the North, a view of neighboring mount Merbabu, climbing to approximately 10,000 ft.

Sadly, I left the memory card for my camera back in the hotel, but we had our small handheld video recorder, so here's a shot from the summit at dawn.

And another shot of Jen ambling around the summit.