Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 5, 2023

1726m

Java, Indonesia

Gunung Andong only boasts 400 m prominence but is actually a very popular objective among the locals. Adam noticed it while browsing the maps. I wasn’t keen initially, but after seeing this little bump from the summit of Merbabu earlier in the day I instantly decided to do it afterwards. The elevation gain would be close to 450 m which was a bit more than ideal for a bonus objective, but we had time, so why not. My main point was that we had two “rest days” afterwards so there’s absolutely no need to reserve energy on this day. I gave the trail-head location to the driver and he negotiated some narrow and winding roads. Within an hour after leaving Selo we were there. Unfortunately there wasn’t anywhere to park the vehicle so he would drive a little ways back and wait for us in the town.

There’s actually a “basecamp” and a gate for this little objective and they charged us 40,000 IDR which was a little bit ridiculous, considering we only paid 10,000 IDR for Gn. Merbabu earlier in the day. We paid them nonetheless because this price was overall “nothing” by North American standard. There are actually a few routes to the summit but we were only interested in the shortest way. The trail was mostly made of staircases. The lowest section was actually made of concrete staircases but the upper route was a little bit softer. There were hordes of hikers and most of them were women, and I wondered why. We passed a total of 3 or 4 Pos/camps before reaching the summit ridge, and the true summit was actually a ways away. We were both exhausted but still made the summit in 37 minutes after leaving the vehicle, without doing any break along the way.

We spent about 5 minutes on the summit to take some pictures. The clouds were engulfing in, so there weren’t that much to see. We opted to take our time on the descent to save the knees but still made down in a timely manner. A lot of the other hikers were looking us in the way as if we were funny. Some of them were able to speak English, and they couldn’t believe we just did Merbabu in the morning. Most of these people would camp on Andong and do this little peak over 2 or 3 days… Our driver then helped us to find a local warung for a well-deserved lunch, and then we drove northwards into the city of Semarang. Adam had booked an expensive hotel for 3 nights, but I would only spend the first night there as I needed a side trip to Singapore afterwards to break the stupid 30-day visa limit.