Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 22, 2023

2276m

Bali, Indonesia

The forested hill of Gunung Batukaru isn’t attractive from tourism perspective but is the second most prominent peak on Bali, and because of that Adam and I had to bag it. Apparently the locals do ascend this peak on a regular basis, and there are several trails on different sides of the mountain. I found the guide (Devi) through recommendation and Devi found a faster guide (Gus) for us. I mentioned specifically that we’d be hiking on a faster pace so Devi assigned us a secondary guide. Both of them would be accompanying us on the ascent but we only needed to pay for one guide’s fee. The package included the pick-up from our hotel in Conggu area and we extended the contract to including the drop-off at the ferry crossing on the far western side of Bali, by paying some extra fee. Batukaru was not one of the must-do objectives on on the original agenda, but this turned out to be a great deal as we managed to squeeze it into a travelling day. Earlier in this trip we had ascended Rinjani and Agung.

Gus came in the early morning as promised and he even arrived half an hour earlier because he worried about the traffics in the downtown area. The worrisome turned out to be unnecessary at this time of a day. Adam and I made him to wait for half an hour nonetheless because we weren’t planning to be ready at 4:30 am. We then picked up Devi and drove 2 hours to the trail-head on the west side of Batukaru. I was glad to hear that we’d be ascending this peak from the shortest side. There’s an entrance fee to pay at the trail-head and a ranger was already there. Again I had been “warned” multiple times about the official closure of Bali’s 22 mountains but the fact a ranger was there collecting our entrance fees suggested the abcense of enforcement, at least for the moment. That’s another reason to do Batukaru in this trip. This peak is at risk of becoming permanently illegal in the near future.

Devi assured that the entire hike would be done in the forest so there’s no need to don sunscreen nor to worry about the heat, and she was correct. The beginning of this trail was easy, but the grade picked up in no time. This turned out to be an even-steeper trail than the one we just did on Agung, with lots of high-steps required on tree roots. The grade was unrelenting and some sections even required scrambling moves. Higher up we passed several “Pos” (or rest stations) and after the last “Pos” the trail became brushy and overgrown. The final push onto the summit was longer than I thought mostly due to the deteriorating trail conditions, and also because of the 1100-m elevation gain. Both of us were anticipating a “rest day objective” but I guess there’s no such thing in Indonesia. All of the prominent peaks here require massive amount of work. Adam was high on energy and arrived in 1 hour 45 minutes. I arrived 12 minutes later and Gus arrived another 10 minutes. Devi had decided to take her time and just meet us on the descent.

After about an hour on the summit the three of us started the descent. We met Devi not far from the summit, but since she had done this peak hundreds of times she didn’t care much about tagging the summit, so we then descended together. All of us were reasonably fast on the downhills and we needed no break until the bottom. There were lots of sections that required caution, but nothing’s really worth noting. We finished the trip in exactly 4 hours after leaving the vehicle. The vehicle was still there and there was no “break-in” despite that our luggage probably worth several thousands of dollars inside the vehicle. Gus and Devi then drove us to the west side of Bali to drop us off at the ferry terminal. This was our final day in Bali and we are moving onto East Java afterwards.