Ramelau

  • Ramelau
  • 2963 m
  • Prominence 2963 m
  • Location: South 8.906410, East 125.49350 (GPS)
  • Timor island HP, East Timor
  • Difficulty: YDS class 1
  • Climbed: July 8, 2023

Information:

How to get there:
The normal starting point is Dili, the capital of East Timor. Dili has daily flights to Bali. From Dili, drive to a very nice guesthouse located at S8.889864, E125.519101, elevation about 1920 meter. The last part of this road is narrow with a few rough spots. A high clearance (4WD) vehicle is recommended.
In order to drive from the guesthouse to the trailhead, a 4WD is absolutely needed. However, this is a relatively short distance, so one might also consider hiking this part. The trailhead, marked with a fancy portal, is located near S8.90636, E125.50586, at elevation near 2265 meter. There is a large flat area here and parking is not difficult.
Route description:
The trailhead is a very impressive portal, then a staircase built by rocks continues uphill. The trail is big and very clear all the way to the summit.
Comments:
After climbing Binaiya on July 2-4, we had quite a long travel to get to Ramelau. First a car back to Masohi, where we found Adam, now fully recovered. The next day, July 5., an early boat back to Tulehu, then another car to Ambon. We had a slight chance to catch a flight to Bali, but that did not work. Thus we travelled to Bali on July 6th. This involved a very long wait in Makassar, wasting most of a day before an early evening flight to Bali. In Bali, we experienced severe traffic jams trying to get to our nearby hotel, then this hotel turned out to not provide the rooms we had booked. Restart, new hotel and more traffic. Finally arriving, we needed dinner. The restaurant failed to get our meals served for about an hour, just to make a bad day complete. On July 7th., we travelled to East Timor, much better progress this day.
We arrived in Dili around noon and pretty soon, we were on the way to Ramelau. However, after a bit more than one hour, going uphill on the main road, our car started to malfunction. We eventually had to accept that our driver would need to drive all the way back to Dili (with Adam), while Aris, Dave and I remained roadside waiting for a new car. They showed up with a better truck after about 2.5 hours.
The journey now resumed without any more issues. We arrived at a pretty nice guesthouse shortly after 2000. The next morning, we left just before daybreak and arrived at the trailhead around 0630. Some practicalities, like signing a register and taking group photos followed. I started up the stairs at 0645, higher up, I realized that I possibly could get to the summit by 0745, but would need to push pretty hard. This worked and I arrived on top of my 52nd top hundred mountain (ranked by prominence) after one hour of fast walking.

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