Doro Dindi
  • Doro Dindi
  • 1628 m
  • Prominence 1514 m
  • Location: South 8.393846, East 118.542394 (GPS)
  • Location: Sumbawa, Indonesia
  • Difficulty: YDS class 2
  • Climbed: July 12. 2023

Information:

How to get there:
The town of Bima is a natural starting point. Bima has daily flights to Bali. From Bima, drive to the small village of Padende, location S8.43116, E118.53316, elevation about 815 meter. This is the trailhead.
Route:
Continue up the somewhat rougher road. When it ends, turn 90 degrees left and follow a nice trail along a fence, you will get to a water tank. This is served by some water pipes. Continue along the trail you should see the pipes running along your trail now. After a while, the main trail forks left and leaves the water pipes. Do NOT take this trail, but continue to follow the pipes. You will soon be on a quite reasonable trail again. Follow this trail to the water intake in the creek. That is follow the pipes all the way to the creek.
Cross the creek just below the water intake, a trail runs a bit left (downstream), then curves right and climbs up the hillside, turning into a ridge. Continue uphill, staying at the top of this ridge. There is sort of a trail at the lower section, higher up fragments remain. Stay on the ridge, it will temporarily top out, a small downhill connecting to a new, slightly steeper uphill, still on the same ridge. Higher up, you will notice that the ridge turns right and continues uphill. The trail is small, it genrally follows the ridge, with a few short bypass section on the right hand side. You will soon arrive at the summit. The summit ridge is fairly level. If you continue a bit past the summit, the ridge descends only slightly and you will arrive at an open area, then observe that the ridge now descends in a more serious way.
The summit ridge appears considerably more narrow than what it looks like from current maps.
Note:When descending it is easy to follow the ridge back and end up descending the somewhat easier north-west ridge. A visible path leads that way. Be careful to turn left and leave this ridge in order to descend the correct south-west ridge. Also, keep in mind that the route continues down south-east about 500 meter from the summit.
Comments/Trip Report:
We came back to Bali (from East Timor) about 2 days ahead of the original plan. This provided for climbing one additional peak, if one could be located close to Bali and also close to a nearby airport. This peak fullfilled the criteria, the only possible problem being a prominence quite close to the lower limit for ultras (1500 meter.).
We arrived back in Bali before noon and just proceeded to the domestic terminal for an afternoon flight to Bima.
Checked in at Marine Inn hotel, modern and with friendly people. This is clearly one of the better hotels we have stayed in on this trip. They also have very good WIFI, much better than what we have experienced in most previous hotels.
We had our driver pick us up at 0500 as agreed and got to the trailhead around 0615. Starting at 0620, we first made a slight mistake by not turning (sharp) left at the end of the road, but continued straight ahead. However, we soon understood that this trail would not get us into the correct drainage and turned around.
Next, we discovered the water pipe along our trail and continued that way. However, we now made (as it turned out) a bigger mistake by following the best trail and thus leave the water pipes. This got us down to the creek lower than we should have been. We crossed the creek, ascended a bit, then bushwack up, parallel to the creek. Eventually, we descended back down and discovered the water pipe trail slightly uphill on the right hand side of the creek. This mistake cost us more time.
From here, we ascended the mountain with no further issues, arriving on the top around 0940. An ascent following the correct route from beginning to end would likely have taken about 2:30.
I explored the summit ridge to the point were it really drops off. This was my ultra prominent mountain number 400, a small celebration with a coke zero! We rested about 30 minutes.

I needed to have my GPS record the elevation for some time, as we had evidence (a 1620 meter countour line), that the summit might be slightly higher than 1618 meter. The measurements varied slightly between 1636m and 1638m over a 15 minute period.
After the climb Jonathan de Ferranti informed me about the following satellite based measurements:
ESA 1623m (reduced by FABDEM to 1609m)
SRTM 1629m
ALOS 1632m
The trees on the summit ridge introduce an extra factor of uncertainty. However, Jonathan believes that the GPS values obtained may be fairly accuraate given the quite narrow shape of the ridge. A map by the Indonesian mapping authority has the value 1628 meter, this seems reasonable given the above facts.

We left at 1010, then walked the "natural" way along the top ridge. We had failed to notice that the main ridge really is to the north-west, not our route. We remarked that is was somewhat steeper on our left than we remembered, but it was not until I noticed a significant bump on the ridge ahead that it became clear that we descended the wrong ridge. Bummer! Turn around and reascend until we could descend the correct route. Another 30 minute loss. We arrived back at the trailhead with our driver waiting at 1250.

I parted with Adam, as he had more time and wanted to climb Tambora. His car arrived timely and I wished him a continued nice stay in Indonesia. It had been fun (as always!) to spend this time together. Then back to Bima. Dinner at Surf Cafe, then an early next morning flight back to Bali.

  • Summit ridge view.