Mount Trikora
Indonesia'S Second Highest Peak, Renamed After The Campaign To Take West Papua, And The Mountain Whose Glacier Has Already Gone · Wamena, Highland Papua
TRIKORA IS INDONESIA'S SECOND-HIGHEST PEAK, somewhere around four thousand seven hundred metres in the JAYAWIJAYA RANGE, and it is almost never climbed. IT WAS WILHELMINA PEAK UNTIL INDONESIA RENAMED IT AFTER TRIKORA - the Three Commands of the People, Sukarno's 1961 campaign to take West Papua from the Dutch - so the mountain carries the politics of the territory in its name, which is not a small thing here. IT USED TO HAVE A GLACIER. THE ICE ON TRIKORA DISAPPEARED AROUND THE MIDDLE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, and the last tropical glaciers in the region, on PUNCAK JAYA, are shrinking fast and are expected to be gone within years. UNLIKE CARSTENSZ, TRIKORA IS A WALK RATHER THAN A CLIMB - no technical rock - which ought to make it the accessible Papuan four-thousander. It is not. It is days of wet, cold, unmarked walking from Wamena and hardly anyone goes. Guides and porters are arranged there, everything is carried in, and rescue is effectively unavailable once you leave the last village.
Puncak Trikora, Jayawijaya, Highland Papua, Wamena, Highland Papua, Indonesia
THE APPROACH IS FROM WAMENA in the BALIEM VALLEY, reached by air from Jayapura - there is no road into the highlands. FROM WAMENA IT IS ROAD TO A VILLAGE AND THEN DAYS OF WALKING, unmarked, through forest and then open alpine grassland and rock. GUIDES AND PORTERS ARE ESSENTIAL AND ARE ARRANGED IN WAMENA; nobody should attempt this independently. PERMIT REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTS OF PAPUA HAVE CHANGED REPEATEDLY - ask locally what currently applies rather than trusting anything published. IT IS COLD, WET AND HIGH: freezing nights, altitude above four thousand metres, and rain in most months. FULL EXPEDITION KIT IS REQUIRED and there is nothing to buy in Wamena. CHECK CURRENT TRAVEL ADVICE FOR PAPUA. RESCUE IS EFFECTIVELY UNAVAILABLE once you leave the village.