The New Normal: Bali the Fourth: Mt. Agung

Near the end of our stay in Tulamben (which we'll post more about soon) we signed up for a nightime hike up Mount Agung, a volcano that towers over Tulamben and most of the eastern half of Bali, of which it is the highest peak. I'd wanted to climb it since the moment I saw it - it looks altogether different than non-volcanic mountains, which, I suppose, makes sense. The idea is to hike the mountain at night to be able to watch the sun rise over pretty much the whole of Bali, which sounded pretty nice. The mountain takes two-and-a-half to three hours to hike up from a starting point already substantially up the hill. It takes an hour to drive around the base of the mountain to the starting point from Tulamben. Sunrise is at about 6:15 AM. Add those items together and the driver picked us up at the hotel at 1AM to make sure we had plenty of time. We roared across the island to the starting point in pretty much a vegetative state, then the driver introduced us to the hired guide and went to sleep in the car until we got back in the morning.

The Challenge: Mt. Agung

At this point, we discovered that we had assumed a few important things that we should not have. For starters, since this hike is a made-for-tourists package type service, and the hiking is, in fact, at night, as a child-of-the-first-world I assumed that they would provide headlamps or something significant by way of illumination of the path. Who brings a headlamp to a tropical island just in case, you know? They don't. For $130 I expected headlamps. We had a little find-your-way-to-the-bathroom flashlight from the hotel and the guide had an LED headlamp, so we decided to give it a try anyhow.

View of the mountain at 2AM with no flashlight

Second, I figured that they would rally a huge group at their staging area, and then shepherd them all up together at the pace of the slowest members of the group. With four hours to make a 2-3 hour walk, everyone would arrive together and they'd only need three guides or so to oversee the operation. I knew just from looking at the mountain from Tulamben that the terrain was tough stuff, and was sort of counting on not having to be fast, just faster than the slowest people. Instead, each group that books separately gets their own guide. We got the youngest, fittest, and by far the best-equipped guide I saw that night, and he had one speed and that was fast. He didn't have any English of note.

The climb starts below a temple and as with the stereotype all temples on mountains in Asia have mondo stairs below them. We bounded up mondo stairs and began positively assaulting further sections of the path. Somewhere around this point Ana confessed to me that the altitude had had her gasping a little in the parking lot and now, further up and under a lot more strain, she was just not getting enough air. I didn't feel anything that I could positively attribute to altitude but there's evidence below that she was not making things up about the atmospheric pressure. Anyhow, she didn't want to keep going up if she couldn't breathe where she was, so I surrendered our crappy flashlight to her and she went back to sit miserably in the parking lot for the rest of the evening because we didn't figure out that the driver hadn't left until the following morning.

We sealed this bottle at the parking lot. Sea-level pressure caused significant distortion.

After Ana's descent, the assault on the path resumed. I was getting a real workout trying to keep up with the guide, but my energy was strongly focused by the fact that if I slowed down, I moved out of the small area lit by his headlamp and couldn't see, so it was very important to keep up - the path was steep and rocky with loose gravel and stones, so not being able to see kind of left you screwed. Focusing on that helped me to not feel the burn so much, and I did keep up even as we passed I think five other groups going up (they all had their own headlamps and more mountaineering gear - must have gotten the memo), so believe me when I say we were cruising. We took a couple of breaks (shorter than the other groups breaks) on a couple of wider, flatter areas of the path where it became obvious that we were up REALLY high. The small lights of the small towns were visible beneath the clouds but the ocean was just black beyond them. The stars and the milky way were very clear and bright due to the altitude and the minimal light pollution, and they were a thing of beauty. The guides all seemed to carry sour fruits, halfway between an orange and a lime, and he shared out a couple. They weren't bad.

As we went higher and higher, the night started to get kind of nasty. I was wearing the heaviest clothes I brought to Bali (jeans, long sleeve T under a thick warm hoodie) and even on the move I was not really warm enough. The wind was strong and gusting enough that when it came it was better to hold on rather than to try to keep moving, because it could push you sideways. For added pleasure, it carried grit and dirt that got into the eyes and everything else. Add this to following superguide at high speed in the dark and I began feeling not so great about the experience on the whole.

I didn't have my watch on so I didn't know how long we'd been walking, and I had been carefully not asking the guide so as not to seem a pussy and also to allow myself to think hopefully about how close we were to finishing rather than asking and finding out that we were nowhere close. There came a time though, stopped for a break under the cover of an enormous rock presumably ejected by the volcano, when I did ask. The guide said two hours. At this point I am certain that he didn't understand the question and gave the time it takes him to climb the whole damn hill (note that that is 25% faster than the normal "fast" speed) but right then I didn't know what to think. I supposed that it was possible that the whole previous climb had only been 1 hour and we were actually on track for a three hour climb. Thinking that I'd only been through 1/3 of the experience, and given how cold it was there, I had no desire to attempt another two hours of bullet-train climbing into what must be steadily colder and windier climes. I bailed. Superguide didn't want anything to do with going back down the hill, so he traded my weak self to another guide who figured he would get paid the same amount of money for less work with me, and we started down the hill.

Now, I told you that superguide was well equipped - at this point please allow me to elaborate. Superguide had hiking books, a hiking-type backpack, an LED headlamp, modern waterproof jacket, and a full set of teeth. Guide #2 was not so lucky. His idea of mountain climbing equipment was flip-flops, a plastic "Punk Rock Isn't Dead" backpack (went nicely with his bright pink beanie for a complete punk-rock ensemble), a ratty coat, and a flashlight even crappier than the one we brought from the hotel, and a less complete set of teeth as befitting his approximate age of 65. His flashlight really did not give much light at all, and it was the only illumination of note that we had.

So we went down the hill, which involved a certain amount of crab-walking and butt-sliding as it really was quite steep and the wind was certainly still out in force. After perhaps 15 or 20 minutes, we encountered a group being lead by a guide who actually spoke English. This guide informed me that we were in fact not 2 hours and fifteen minutes from the top, but closer to half an hour. I rapidly computed that 15 to 20 minutes prior, I had been 10 to 15 minutes from the top and cursed. Having already given up and realizing that at the extant temperatures even if I summited I couldn't wait around for more than an hour for the sun to come up without freezing, I decided to continue down. However, having been so narrowly thwarted I resolved that someday I shall return to Mount Agung and drink its milkshake in an uncompromising fashion.

Another half an hour down the hill and it really gets fun when Punk Rock guide's flashlight starts dying. We had a longish period of intermittent light when he was turning it on and off and shaking it and tapping it and so forth, but eventually it truly died. During this exciting period, there were times when it was clear that the guide was not sure if we were on the right path, with some doubling back and going sideways across places that were surely not the path. He did manage to keep us from straying too far. We made it in this comical fashion back below treeline, so when the light died I figured the smartest thing to do was sit tight and wait for sunrise as the temperature was no longer a problem. Punk Rock guide was more of a feel-your-way-through-the-sharp-rocks in darkness kind of guy though, so we kept going and I added to my already significant collection of cuts, bruises, lacerations, etc. There were a couple of places where serious injury was in the offing with crevices and steep drops and the like but I failed to stumble into or fall off any of them based only on starlight and touch.

Rarely have I been so happy to see dawn.

This is taken from not-anywhere-close-to-the-top. Note the clouds waaay down there.

Once the sun started coming up and we could actually see again, progress sped up considerably. The temperature and view improved markedly as well. I took some pictures from where we were on the mountain - most of them as washed out because the light was so low, but hopefully you can get some ideas. Even below treeline the views were gorgeous. When we approached the starting point there was the temple that all those stairs belonged to, and as I looked out over the small plateau it was on the temple looked like it was floating on the clouds below it, which was breathtaking and in my book made the whole thing worth it. Ana had started back up the hill when the sun came up and met us coming down at the temple, so we have a picture of her at the top of the stairs leading up to the plateau. I went on the stairs at the very gate of the temple for a picture, which came right before being chased off said stairs by temple personnel.