How to get there:
Makassar is a good starting point. We did this as a daytrip
starting from Makassar in the morning, climbing the peak, then
returning to Makassar in the evening.
The road between Makassar and the trailhead is a bit unclear, we started out
using an interior (inland) road, but eventually gave up on this, wasted a lot
of time when going back towards Makassar in order to connect with the
coastal road. Unless more reliable information is available, the coastal
road should be used.
The trailhead is located near S05.402323, E119.919071, elevation
about 1600 meter. One may drive there with a normal car.
Route description:
The route starts uphill along a farmers road that cuts across to more
houses. Here, it turns uphill, still along a farmers road. Higher up,
a pretty clear trail forks left while the road continues uphill towards
the uppermost farm buildings. After a last farmed area, the trail crosses
a small river (easy), there are trail signs posted here.
Next, the trail ascends to a main ridge, then more gently across this before
the start of a pretty gentle but sustained ascent up along this ridge. The ridge
tops out and there is a descent to a connecting saddle. From here, the route is
quite interesting as it sometimes makes a traverse, sometimes ascends back on
a ridge, then traverses on the opposite side and so on. Finally, near the summit
there is a short but
interesting rock scramble,
YDS class 3. You will soon arrive
at a concrete summit pillar and
summit signs. However, this is NOT the summit!
It is hard to understand how local people seems to ignore facts and define a summit
when it is absolutely trivial to continue to the true summit. Continue along the trail
and descend to a shallow col, then ascend a local
top with a pretty big boulder exactly
on its top. From here, you see across a short
distance to a grassy hill. These are the
two competing summits,
the top of the boulder or the grassy hill. Visit both points,
they are quite close together.
My GPS measurement was in
full agreement with the summit elevation of
2886 meter.
Comments:
Since we knew this would be a long day, we left our hotel in Makassar already
at 0400. It had been decided to take a road that connected more directly rather
than driving a longer route along the coast.
However, the road got progressively worse and after more than one hour the
future did not look good. We eventually decided to turn around and drive back
towards Makassar until there was a safe way to connect with the coastal highway.
We left the car at 0930, about 2.5 hours later than planned. I did not feel
very well, sort of weak and Adam and Dave were soon way ahead while Aris and
I hiked up the ridge as a separate group. We still made the summit area
at 1420, meeting Adam and Dave that were just about to start descending.
We walked across to the two competing high points and rested there. The weather was still
very reasonable, some clouds drifting about,
but also periods with sunshine.
We left the official summit at 1515 and knew it would be dark before returning
to the car. At 1815, we were already down near the end of the ridge, but needing
our torch lights from here. Descending is a bit slower in the dark, but we
kept going well and reached the car by 1915, so one hour in the dark for a total
time of 4 hours descending.
