Location: South 08:24.698, East 116:27.482 (GPS at the summit)
Difficulty: YDS class 2.
Climbed July 14. 2006.
Information:
How to get there:
This might be quite some challenge, depending on your point of
departure. We travelled from Norway via London to Singapore. Then onwards
via Jakarta (on Java) and finally a couple of hours flight to Mataram, the main city and
airport on the island Lombok. Lombok is the first major island east of the better
known island of Bali.
There are two possible trailheads.
The first and best known starts from the village of Senaru, while the second trailhead
is located in the village of Sembalun Lawang located (about 11 km) south-east of Senaru.
There is a road connecting these two villages that runs via a village north of Senaru, the
travel time by car is about 45 minutes.
Regardless of where one decides to start, the place to get organized is in Senaru. There
are many independent trekking organizers, however, they all cooperate to some extent and
have fairly standard prices for their services. We used Mr. Suhardy,
alias Hardy Kruger, professional and friendly, not a glitch, thus highly recommended.
If you arrive independently to Senaru, then
look for a sign on your right hand side saying "Emy's Cafe", the precise
location is: S08:17.890, E116:24.509, elevation 509 meter.
(This is sort of in the middle of a gentle uphill section of the village road.)
He can organize transport, rent tent(s) and equipment, provide food, a guide and porter(s) etc.
I would strongly recommend buying some service, it is inexpensive, helps the local
community with employment and ensures a more unique hiking experience, see the trip
report and some pictures below. Rinjani is part of a National Park and you should
make certain that you do pay the appropriate park entrance fees regardless of using
a guide service or not.
The road continues about a kilometer further uphill and ends where
the trail starts, this is at location
S08:18.166, E116:24.067, elevation 603 meter.
The trailhead in Sembalun Lawang is much less obvious. The trail starts out directly right
between two parallel clay walls (each about one meter high). The road is fairly straight and
continues gently uphill at this point. The precise location of this starting point is
S08:20.407, E116:30.058, elevation 996 meter (my GPS had a bit poor reception so this
elevation may have some error). Route description:
This climb should be done as part of a hike, a very nice trek across beautiful
and unique landscape in South-East Asia. We spent two nights and the entire trip
took about 48 hours, this is a minimum and requires pretty strong hiking. To reserve
three nights and up to four days would enable a more leisurely pace and somewhat less
physical effort. This description covers the entire route from
Sembalun Lawang vie the summit of Rinjani and the beautiful crater lake back to Senaru.
Variations to this should be obvious by reading the relevant section and possibly reversing
the direction of hiking. The route requires a net vertical climb of more than 3300 meter, more
if one hikes roundtrip from Senaru. The "easiest" approach in order to climb the summit only
would be a roundtrip hike from Sembalun Lawang, however this cannot be recommended as the
route via the crater lake should be experienced by all trekkers that make it to Rinjani.
Start out from the trailhead in Sembalun Lawang and follow the narrow trail as it runs through
fields and crosses some (dry) rivers. Gradually, this trail becomes more distinct and well
travelled. It is likely that local people arrive from different starting points in the
Sembalun Lawang. The trail heads uphill across open grass land while traversing to the
hikers right hand side. There are several well built (concrete) bridges that takes the
trail across (in the dry season) dry river beds.
After one to two hours of hiking you arrive at location
S08:21.682, E116:28.542, elevation 1438 meter.
The trail continues gradually more uphill and you will reach a shelter (no walls but a roof) near
a (dry) river gorge at location S08:22.563, E116:27.477. You have now reached an elevation
of 1805 meter, almost half the vertical before you reach the crater rim. From here, the trail
gets steeper as it climbs more directly uphill. The trees grow somewhat more sparsely and
the trail climbs a pretty long and steep hillside in a zig-zag pattern before reaching a slightly
more gentle slope that heads more to the hikers right and gains the main crater rim. From this point
you see the impressive crater lake below you and the Rinjani summit appears very close up to your
left side.
Continue left along the rim on a good trail. You will soon find the trail fork where the right
fork descends the crater in order to reach the lake. Take the left branch and continue a short
section along the rim towards the peak until you reach the designated camp area just where the
rim runs into a major uphill section. There is a toilet at this site as well as safe drinking
water nearby, the guides certainly knows how to replenish your water supply. The location of this
camp is S08:23.639, E116:26.405, at elevation 2717 meter.
It is normal to spend the night here and head for the summit early the next day. Early or not,
this is definitely the spot one should start from in order to climb the Rinjani summit.
From this camp, the trail zig-zags steeply up the slope above in order to reach a new well defined
section of the crater rim higher up. After gaining about 250 vertical meter you are again on a very
nice and moderately narrow rim, location S08:23.926, E116:26.427 and elevation 2970 meter. Follow
this ridge (rim) towards the summit (your left). Be careful as the crater side (your right side) istravelled. It is likely that local people arrive from different starting points in the
Sembalun Lawang. The trail heads uphill across open grass land while traversing to the
hikers right hand side. There are several well built (concrete) bridges that takes the
trail across (in the dry season) dry river beds.
After one to two hours of hiking you arrive at location
S08:21.682, E116:28.542, elevation 1438 meter.
The trail continues gradually more uphill and you will reach a shelter (no walls but a roof) near
a (dry) river gorge at location S08:22.563, E116:27.477. You have now reached an elevation
of 1805 meter, almost half the vertical before you reach the crater rim. From here, the trail
gets steeper as it climbs more directly uphill. The trees grow somewhat more sparsely and
the trail climbs a pretty long and steep hillside in a zig-zag pattern before reaching a slightly
more gentle slope that heads more to the hikers right and gains the main crater rim. From this point
you see the impressive crater lake below you and the Rinjani summit appears very close up to your
left side.
Continue left along the rim on a good trail. You will soon find the trail fork where the right
fork descends the crater in order to reach the lake. Take the left branch and continue a short
section along the rim towards the peak until you reach the designated camp area just where the
rim runs into a major uphill section. There is a toilet at this site as well as safe drinking
water nearby, the guides certainly knows how to replenish your water supply. The location of this
camp is S08:23.639, E116:26.405, at elevation 2717 meter.
It is normal to spend the night here and head for the summit early the next day. Early or not,
this is definitely the spot one should start from in order to climb the Rinjani summit.
From this camp, the trail zig-zags steeply up the slope above in order to reach a new well defined
section of the crater rim higher up. After gaining about 250 vertical meter you are again on a very
nice and moderately narrow rim, location S08:23.926, E116:26.427 and elevation 2970 meter. Follow
this ridge (rim) towards the summit (your left). Be careful as the crater side (your right side) is
quite steep and the rock is loose and dangerous. The trail is quite good and the slope is a steady
uphill as you approach the final, somewhat steeper section of the climb. The trail now has a section
with loose rocks. One may easily slip a half step backward, however, with some careful placement
of your boots the slope is not all that bad. You will see larger rock features up ahead. Once you reach
these the summit is only about 50 more meter away. People customary try to reach the summit just
before sunrise. Be aware that the wind can be quite strong and the temperature quite low (compared
to the jungle below), it may be smart to adjust the speed of ascent in order not to arrive before
six in the morning.
The highest part of the summit plateau is quite small and all edges consist of treacherous
loose volcanic gravel. Shortly before we where there (June 2006) a 27 year old climber fell
to his death from the summit. Thus, extreme care should be taken while enjoying the views
and photographing. The summit is often quite crowded at sunrise and this adds an extra
element of risk when moving around.
On a good morning you will experience a very beautiful sunrise as well as good views of most of
Lombok, the small islands near the coast as well as a look across to the mountains of Bali.
Descend the same route back to the camp at 2717 meter. From here, backtrack your previous
trail the short section to the trail fork mentioned earlier. Take a sharp left and follow the
trail as it descends to the impressive crater lake. This trail has a few rather steep
sections where one may have to use hands for balance and added safety.
The lake area (elevation 2000 meter)
is quite beautiful and you are likely to see many local people fishing. The temperature
is refreshing, but not cold and a well deserved swim can be recommended. There are several good
places for making a second night camp here if this suits your schedule.
The trail runs right next to the water, then heads uphill, again steeply in order to regain
the rim on its route to Senaru. The trail is well built and provides an ever changing good view
back down towards the lake, to the newborn volcanot in 1994 started an eruption that has
partly filled into the lake, as well as across to the
towering summit of Rinjani. Again, there are
a few steep sections where the use of hands for added security is advisable. In particular,
just before topping out on the rim, there is a (very)
short section that requires scrambling (YDS class 2+).
There is an established camping area on the rim at this point. The location is
S08:23.036, E116:24.025, elevation 2637 meter.
From here, the route heads steady downhill in order to reach the village of Senaru. The descent down to
what is called Camp III, location S08:22.150, E116:23.962, elevation 2136 meter, is mostly on open
slopes. From Camp III, the trail heads into the jungle and descends steadily passing Camp II and
Camp I along the way before reaching the outskirts of Senaru. You will notice a few local
huts, banana trees and perhaps a few domestic animals before reaching a large portal that
(in the opposite direction) announces the entrance to the Rinjani National Park. From here,
there is only a short section of hiking before you reach the trailhead at the end of
the road in Senaru. Trip Report / Comments:
I did this hike with my son Pål Jørgen, age 17.
We organized this via the hotel Desa Dunia Beda on the island Gili Trawangan, where we had
booked a week stay. They took care of everything, including the initial transport by horse
carriage (no cars on Trawangan), transfer to Lombok by boat,
a new section by horse followed
by car transport to Senaru. In Senaru, a guide and a porter had
organized the supplies and were
ready for the transfer to our starting point from Sembalun Lawang. We brought our own tent, sleeping
bags, headlamps and warm clothing from Norway and we carried this ourselves. Most (all) of this
equipment could also have been rented, including an additional porter if one wanted a hike with no
backpack. I do, however, think it is a good practice to carry a pack on this kind of trip.
The total cost of all this was 270 US dollars (for two people), clearly more than a "do it yourself"
approach, but reasonable when considering how smooth and efficient the whole trip turned out.
Our guide was a 27 year old man, slim and strong with a body weight of only 45 kg. He had a wife
and a 4 year old daughter. He said that the rainy season represented a big problem since he
was unemployed whenever there was no guiding to be done. The trail becomes too slippery when
it rains, effectively shutting down the entire trekking business on Rinjani/Lombok. The porter
was a young smiling boy, I am pretty sure a teenager. When asked about his age neither he nor
the guide wanted to answer. My guess is that they did not want to reveal that boys under 20
years of age worked as porters. The porter did not speak english, to speak english is likely
an important ability when a "promotion" from porter to guide is considered.
The porter and his load were perhaps the most unique aspect of the trip. He carried everything
on a solid, about 2 meter long bamboo pole.
At each end of the pole he attached a standard
box that contained most of the supplies. Under each box various bottles, pots and pans could
hang, plus bananas and pinapples. A full board (24) of eggs was attached on top of one box and
the entire load would then be balanced on the bamboo pole across a shoulder. We observed
numerous local farmers that carried everything from bananas to farm equipment in the same
manner, so no doubt this is the traditional local way for men to carry heavy loads.
We started hiking around 1100 on Thursday, July 13. The guide started out with
quite a high pace, we realized later that this was likely to get a feeling for
the speed of his party. However, Pål Jørgen did never fall more than
a meter behind following him like his shadow.
I followed Pål Jørgen equally
close while thinking that this pace would hardly be sustainable for the 1700 meter vertical
climb that lay in front of us. The young porter fell behind, but not by much. After 30 minutes,
the guide stopped and announced that we should wait "for his porter". The porter soon arrived
and we continued our trek. The trail crossed a few dry river gorges, otherwise headed through
pretty open grasland while slowly gaining elevation. We continued another hour and then again
waited for the porter. He seemed to arrive surprisingly fast. As we continued uphill, the pace
gradually slowed down. We did indeed sense that our guide had symptons of being a little
tired. We climbed out of the grasland and in between sparsely growing trees,
then made a stop
at an official rest area
near a (dry) river gorge at about 1800 meter of
elevation. This time, our porter was appreciably behind,
perhaps almost 30 minutes. We rested for a full hour before continuing.
The weather was cloudy, even a few scattered drops of rain.
We kept passing other parties, including a couple that turned out to be Danish.
The trail climbed a broad
ridge, then headed up a pretty steep and quite impressive hillside.
We gradually passed up through the clouds and ascended above them. A good feeling to see this
enormous blanket of clouds rolled out to cover the land while we steadily advanced higher and
higher above it.
As we finally hit the top
of the hill, the trail went more rightwards and climbed more gently until topping out on a main
ridge from where we for the first time, could look into the enormous crater and the
extremely beautiful crater lake.
What remained was just about 15 minutes of gentle walk along this
rim until we arrived at the official campsite directly below the summit. It seemed quite unreal that
the vertical distance to the summit should still be 1000 meter.
The summit looked deceptively close.
Excluding the long rests, this climb from the trailhead to the camp had taken us just about 4 hours.
We pitched our small Bibler tent as the guide and porter started a fire to prepare dinner. They had
carefully collected dry wood and old branches further down in order not to tax the more
fragile vegetation near the camp site. Cooking was facinating to watch. Back home, this would
typically be a matter of boiling some water, pour it into a
dehydrated package of food, wait 5 minutes and then
eat it directly from the package. Nothing like this here. A couple of pots and a large wok had
been taken along. Vegetables are carefully cut, rice and meat prepared. The traditional Indonesian
egg added. Good heat under the wok,
stir the ingredients carefully and serve a full Indonesian
meal just as if it had been prepared in a local restaurant.
It was a gorgerous evening on this high ridge,
hard to not just sit and watch the clouds in the
evening light.
Well fed, we finally got back into our tent and slept in order to be well rested for the early
departure the next morning.
Guides and porters (not only ours!) started cooking and talking quite early. It was difficult to
fall asleep once awake. I still was half sleeping until woken by the guide around 2:45. Still some
unfamiliar (southern sky) stars across the sky. The moon was near full and
gave a fairly good light, the stars had been many more and much brighter after sunset
last evening before the moon came up. Just last evening I had refreshed my knowledge
of the Southern Cross.
We started out with lights shortly after 3 AM, many people had already left, in fact, we were the very
last team to depart for the summit. The guide set a fast pace and we soon caught up with other
parties. I tried to warn that with this speed we would reach the summit long before sunrise and likely
suffer a cold waiting period up there, but this seemed not to be understood. We continued up along the
rim and steadily passed other people. It is interesting and it somewhat surprised me to observe that
the great majority of hikers/climbers were local people from Lombok. Aside from us and the Danish couple
I saw two teams from Australia besides a fairly large number (more than 10) local Indonesians.
Just as feared and predicted, we reached the big boulders just below the summit already around 0515, 45 minutes
before any sign of sunrise. We sat down and tried to find shelter for the pretty strong wind. Shortly, about
15 people huddled together like birds trying to seek protection from each other. How much smarter it would
have been to walk more slowly. My Devold wool underwear was all wet from sweat and the wind combined with
perhaps 3-5 Centigrades made me pretty uncomfortable. Pål Jørgen was also cold, his place
was less protected than mine. Long and last the clock showed 6 AM and we all moved the few remaining
steps onto the summit. The eastern sky was glowing red,
but there were too many clouds out there to really
make the sunrise spectacular.
Light came quickly and we all enjoyed the nice view of the crater, the
crater lake and the small islands off the Lombok coast. Clouds dominated, but they were all considerably
lower than our summit.
By shear coincidence it was July 14th. - exactly one
month after I stood on the Denali summit in Alaska.
What an enormous difference between two summits that both share the distinction of being among the
most prominent in the world.
My GPS showed 3737 meter, however a careful reading at sea-level gave 10 meter, so it seems that
3726 meter may be a pretty accurate value.
Around 0630, we finally started down. The loose gravel made descent very easy, not unlike descending in
fairly loose powder snow. You do a controlled small slide with every step. We were back in camp before 8 AM,
breakfast was served before we broke camp and started our hike down to the crater lake.
The trail was surprisingly steep in places and care was needed. We arrived at the lake and made a longer
stop for lunch. Again, a quite elaborate Indonesian meal
was prepared - the taste was great and we
all truly enjoyed this culinary experience in the wilderness. I had a nice swim in the lake just before
lunch. The temperature was good summer for a (much lower) Norwegian lake, about 23 Centigrade. A lot of
Indonesians were fishing along
the shore and they did catch quite a few nice, but small fish. The guide
told us that when the new volcano erupted here i 1994 and lava started to flow into the lake, one could
pick fresh and newly cooked fish directly from the (boiling hot) lake.
After lunch, we took a 5-10 minute side trip down along the river that drains the lake in order to see
the hot springs. Right next to a nice waterfall, there is hot water coming directly out of the rock.
This water is channeled intoa couple of small basins where people
can enjoy a jacuzzi made by nature.
We returned to our lunch site, picked up the packs and headed along the lake to the place
where the trail again went steeply uphill. Our porter had a lighter load on his bamboo pole by now,
but still fell slightly behind on the steep ascent. Partly, this was due to the need
for shifting the pole around to avoid hitting the rocks while climbing. We made a brief stop
about half way up and very shortly thereafter the porter appeared, exclaiming "Oh my God!", an
impulsive reaction to the high speed set by our guide. I gave him a tumbs up sign and clearly expressed
how impressed I was with his speed and strength, a broad and happy grin immediately came in return.
We made the rim after a brief stop to photograph monkeys
near the trail. From here, the view of the crater
lake, the summit of Rinjani, as well as the new volcano is indeed very nice and quite different from
our earlier view from the opposite side.
I now knew that we would complete the hike pretty early the next morning and with coordinated
transport be able to enjoy lunch with my wife and son back on Trawangan tomorrow. I therefore suggested
that I try to call (mobile phone) from the rim and set a time for the return transport. Our guide did
not think such a call could go through due to all the clouds below us. I explained that a cell phone
actually worked well also through clouds, this was clearly counter intuitive for our local friend.
The call went through and we agreed to plan for a pickup at 10 the next morning. After shooting a few
last pictures from the rim, we waved goodbye and headed down to Camp III where we spent the night.
Camp III has lots of monkeys so one must watch everything carefully, in particular, all kinds of food.
The next morning, we started around 0645 and immediately headed into the jungle. The trail and environment
is very different from our ascent. Big trees everywhere and a nice trail winding its way down the slopes.
A black monkey was spotted high in a tree, but too late for a good picture. Gradually, we came down to
the outskirts of the village. More people around, more banana trees
and then the official portal to
the national park quickly followed by the trailhead and the beginning of the road.
Our return transport went smoothly and on time and we were back on our island headquarter well before
1 PM and a well deserved dip in the pool before an equally deserved lunch. The afternoon was
relaxed with more swimming and our day ended with watching the sun set
in the ocean.
With this our stay on Lombok would soon end and we would move on to the much bigger island, but lesser known
by tourists, Sumatra - the sixth largest island in the world. My next goal would be its highest
point Kerinci rising to 3805 meter above the sea.
Resources:
Images
Gunung Rinjani, as seen from the island Trawangan, early morning.
