This sweet girl came up to me on the busy and muddy market of Timika, the small town near the South Coast of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya.

She has the clear features of the Dani tribe, but could also have been a granddaughter of Don King ;-)

Shot with Canon eos 500d in October 1999, scanned later.

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Cold and wet and windy was our campsite at the foot of Carstensz Pyramid, the highest mountain of Australasia/Oceania. Though just a few kilometers lower the jungle is hot, here the cold and barren rocks make for an unwelcome atmosphere…

Shot in 1999 on regular Kodak film with Canon 500n, scanned later

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It’s a classic view, so I changed the colours a bit. Only spent a few hours here on a stopover, but was taken by the friendly atmosphere of the city and will be back…

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Carstensz Pyramid is the highest mountain of Oceania, named after Dutch sailor Jan Carstensz who saw the snowy mountains in 1623. The first western explorers were also Dutch, climbing the then higher nearby peak Ngga Pulu. But since then the snow has melted so much that now rocky Carstensz Pyramid is higher.

One of the geologists of the 1936 expedition, Dozy, filed a report about the rocks and soil he gathered at “Ertsberg” (Dutch for “ore mountain”), filled with copper. It disappeared in a library and went unnoticed due to the 2nd World War, only to be rediscovered 20 year later by a geologist of the Freeport mining company.

The rest is history, just like Ertsberg itself and as you can see here, also the follow-up mine of nearby Grasberg (“Grass mountain”) is nearly history, the mountain has virtually disappeared due to the growing demand of copper and gold and money in general.

On this Nasa picture (link) you can see the direct impact the huge mining pit has on the landscape as well as the diminishing glaciers, one of the last on the equator. What is less visible is the ecological disaster of this largest goldmine in the world, a stream of toxic residue has wiped out most life downstream to the sea. Freeport company pays the local Indonesian Army and therefore the original inhabitants of Papua see nothing from the $$$ of this mine and get chased away from their own soil and even killed. Read more on these links about one of the largest but most forgotten man-made ecological and cultural disasters.

Shot in 1999 with Eos 500n on kodachrome film, at the start of our expedition. At that time the mine access road could still be used to get near the mountain, currently the mine has revoked all permission as they do not like people reporting on these issues. Carstensz Pyramid, one of the ’7 summits’ might be in danger itself, though it is just inside a national park, underground mining shafts seem to be very close if not directly underneath the mountain.

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Though the lowest of the fabled 7 summits Carstensz Pyramid offers some exhilarating climbing. After summiting late October 1999, we were on our way back across the long summit ridge when we came upon the Gap again.
Clouds rolled in constantly, but at least the snowing of a few hours before had stopped. I knew that left of the ridge should be a vertical drop onto the jungle, a few kilometers below. To the right was the steep North face we had climbed to get here, but we could see only the clouds…

In theory we should have been able to see the sea to the South-West as Jan Carstensz saw this peak from it when he sailed past in 1623. Later nobody believed him when he said that he saw snow and ice near the equator, but the mountain kept his name, though the Indonesians called it Puncak Jaya – Victory Peak.

Jaime and Jose are almost ready to do the abseil in the gap, while climber Leszek Cichy already had climbed back up on the other side and is standing on the ridge. He had just finished climbing the 7 summits, 19 years after a winter ascent -the first ever- of Everest was his first..

Shot with Canon 500n, October 1999 on some Kodachrome film.

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a href=http://7summits.com/carstensz target=”_new”>Carstensz Pyramid was named after the Dutchman Jan Carstensz, the first westerner to spot this range -and its glaciers nearby- from the ocean. Located on Papua, formerly Irian Jaya, it is the highest point of Oceania and therefore one of the fabled 7 summits.
Though the lowest of the 7, it has some technical rock sections, most of them are located on this summit ridge at about 4700m altitude. The rock is sharp and it rains and snows all day long, just this moment of clearance gave me a chance to quickly take a picture.

Wonderful adventure to climb sharp limestone rock near the equator, near people who live in the Stone Age, wearing nothing but penisgourds. Scanned from old kodagold film, shot in October 1999.

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