Made an attempt on Ijen-Merapi today. Some great views but overall a rather disappointing experience unfortunately due to a mixture of all the usual problems – excessively expensive transport, terrible roads, having to pay ‘uang rokok’ for permission to climb a hill and then the ‘puncak’ not being the actual ‘puncak’. I got a jeep from Banyuwangi which was a rather steep 700,000 for 12 hours rental with driver (my fault for travelling alone I suppose – hopefully enough time to get to the summit and back) because there is seemingly no other transport available from the Banyuwangi side. The jeep proved totally essential as although there are plenty of signs for Kawah Ijen the road up from Banyuwangi is not passable by ordinary vehicles on the higher sections – that’s why most visitors head to Ijen from the north though why local authorities haven’t done something about the condition of the road is a mystery given that it is one of East Java’s main tourist attractions. The warungs at Paltuding were full of tourists heading up or back down from dawn at Ijen.
I had been advised to ask for a chap named Pak Im who is supposedly the main person who knows about Ijen-Merapi – a mountain which despite being only 400 metres higher than the Ijen rim itself is hardly ever climbed by anyone and is wrongly considered a major expedition. At first he declined to help me reach the top as he claimed you would have to set off at 5am to climb Merapi and come back in one day. After a week of bizarre and ridiculous reasons given for not being able to climb various other peaks in East Java (including ‘magic in the area’ for Gunung Tarub/Lamongan) this seemed fairly normal. I trotted over to the office to enquire about someone else who might be able to assist. My request to climb Merapi was greeted with a great deal of shock. I was told it wasn’t possible, that I needed to have a special permit from Surabaya (several hundred km away). In the end it was agreed that if I took full responsibility for any accidents enroute then if I paid 200,000 ‘admin’ fee (to keep the guys in the office with enough cigarettes for the next week) plus 300,000 guide fee then it would be ok. It’s amazing but rather depressing what a few bank notes can do. Pak Im suddenly re-appeared and we set off.
Seeing the sulphur collectors coming down the Ijen trail with their heavy loads is a surreal and humbling sight – a very tough job indeed. We were at Ijen crater itself in just over an hour and the lake shone a brilliant blue in the morning sunlight and there were some excellent views west to Gunung Raung. From the rim we turned right through dense foliage and headed up a bracken-covered ridge of Gunung Ijen-Merapi. The path is faint and we needed a machete – this was the first trip up Ijen-Merapi by anyone for well over a year! Views down to Ijen lake are superb at this section but watch out for occasional razor-sharp grass. The drop to the left is also very steep so be extra careful. Finally the rim of Merapi is reached (we did it in just 3 hours) and you look down over the north-western sandy crater (there is another one further east with a horse-shoe shaped clump of foliage in the middle). This point we had reached (approx 2,777m) was, according to my guide, the ‘puncak’ and there was indeed a small sign – allegedly made by volcanologists a few years ago. However it was obvious that the forested ridge to the north of the eastern crater was higher (2,803m according to the Bako map) and I tried to convince the guide to keep on going with his machete to reach the true summit. He declined, saying he had never been there and never heard of anyone going there. I’m pretty sure Java Lava got to the true summit in 2006 so I told him to wait for me while I descending into the dry sandy crater and tried to bash my way up the other side and onto the ridge higher ridge above the horse-shoe crater. The first sandy crater itself was a great place to walk in – on the world’s most densely-populated island you can still find some remarkably wild areas. Unfortunately the vegetation – including Javanese Edelweiss – was just too thick to get up to the ridge between the two main sandy craters and follow it along to the highest point of the ridge. It would have required at least two people with machetes and probably a night spent up at the top. It reminded me of Papandayan where the highest point of the mountain massif is just too thickly-vegetated to be passable expect at a snail’s pace with a machete. It was at least another 400 metres distance of thick and spiky bush so I had to retreat and we were back down at the Ijen crater in just over an hour.
Despite the short distance of the hike, this one requires more than one day at the moment because of the terrain. It’s a hike of tremendous potential and a real shame that more local people haven’t thought of climbing this hill. It’s the last huge mountain before the Bali strait so views east to Bali are incredible. Why have so few hikers shown any initiative in this regard? It’s also a great shame that any other hikers wishing to climb it will – for the moment – have to pay bribe money at the office in order to try to do it. In my eperiences so far, it would appear that Indonesian tourist attractions and national parks seem more concerned with keeping people out or deflating their plans or simply pocketing whatever cash they can extract from Indonesians and non-Indonesians alike rather than enabling and assisting access – here’s hoping things will change before too long. It wouldn’t take a lot of work to keep the route open and actually allow people to explore the area and perhaps put up a sign or two. I’m sure it would be a very popular route once people began to know about it – many of the ‘turis’ who wander up to Ijen every morning must wonder what is it the top of the bigger neighbouring peak. That hikers supposedly need permission from Surabaya to hike up this interesting mountain highlights the fact that serious problems with access to the natural environment remain for all hikers in Indonesia.