What Lonely Planet Doesn't Tell You
Trip Start
May 18, 2008
1
16
18
Trip End
Jun 16, 2008
Mt. Wilhelm,
Papua New Guinea
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Saturday/Sunday we climbed Mt. Wilhelm, PNG's highest peak at 4509 meters (~15800 ft).
What Lonely Planet doesn't tell you:
- To get to Mt. Wilhelm you actually have to traverse through 5 OTHER peaks
- They describe it as a "walk," but there is actually no trail and a large portion of the trek consists of loose rock, sheer cliff falloffs, rock faces and mud
- You have to start your climb at 2am with flashlights in order to reach the peak before clouds roll in just after sunrise
The drive there is treacherous - unpaved road on the edge of mountains, filled with boulders and stones. I take back anything I ever said about the roads in Cambodia being bad. On top of this, we rode in the back of a flatbed truck piled with locals, groceries and a tub of lard! I managed to sleep through all of this, and was termed catatonic by Kristen & Tim. I did waken when an entire can of Fanta was spilled on me, unbeknownst to the woman carrying it. Shortly thereafter, the same woman spit beetlenut juice on me (which looks like blood and they spit it EVERYWHERE, adding to the underlying picture of violence in this country). At any rate, this had the makings of a great trip already! On the way back, I was unfortunately quite awake and clutched the seat in front of me for dear life as the vehicle teetered over the edge and I looked straight down multiple thousand foot drop-offs. It would definitely be too much to ask for guardrails in this country.
But, what Lonely Planet DOES tell you is that, "people HAVE died on this climb," and this kept running through my head as we hiked, along with headlines of "Tourist perishes in fall off Mt. Wilhelm. Probe asks: Who tours PNG anyway?" On the way back, all I could see was "SUCKS: Tourist makes treacherous climb atop Mt. Wilhelm only to die in car crash on return"
From base camp at Kegulsol (2700m) it takes 3.5 hours to get to the lake huts (3600m). The lake huts lack electricity, heat, hot water and bathrooms. We cook in candlelight a meal of rice and peas, wake at 1am to more rice and peas. We begin our ascent to the summit w/ guides at 2am, seeing the flashlights of people ahead of us. Within the first hour, nausea sets in and I periodically vomit until all the rice and biscuits are gone. I soldier on. Pretty frequently, we see climbers turn back due to altitude sickness. I refuse! Time stands still - at every turn, we are told the peak is just after the next ridge. When day breaks, we see how steep and rough the terrain really is. At this point I'm pretty delirious and lightheaded from lack of oxygen. The plaque about the sergeant who was last seen here in 1971, really unhelpful. The cool part is seeing the ecological changes that happen with altitude - rainforest transforms into grassland, waterfalls, culminating finally in rocky crags, lichen and ice. We get to the summit at 7:30am. It's gorgeous, with views of the mountain ranges and the coasts on both sides. It's freezing and unstable at the top, so we hasten our descent. Eat more rice and peas. Most people spend the night at base camp before returning back to town. We decide to forge ahead, having made arrangements to hire a driver back. Quite proud of ourselves!
