Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 1, 2023

975m

Java, Indonesia

Gunung Bongkok is the highest of a cluster of rock towers SW of Purwakarta in West Java, boasting over 600 m prominence. This group of peaks are rather small but they all have impressive profiles that do not seem to belong to this area. The rock quality is also exceptionally good for Indonesian standard and the nearby Gn. Parang is a popular site for rock climbing and via-ferrata climbing. Gn. Parang is actually the more famous of the two but Adam and I needed the prominence status so our objective was solely Gn. Bongkok. This was rather just a bonus add-on objective and we didn’t have enough time/energy to tackle both of them. Earlier in the day we had driven all the way to Tampomas from Jakarta, and the plan was to tag Bongkok while driving back. I knew this was an ambitious plan but I didn’t think it’s that ambitious. This eventually turned out to become a 20-hour day.

While planning this ascent I was not aware of the road status. Apparently most climbers take expensive motorcycle rides to access Parang and Bongkok, but our driver was thankfully willing to drive us up the 10-km rough gravel roads in his vehicle. The crawling was not difficult, but painfully slow. Apparently the conditions were better this year that in normal conditions the driving would not be much faster than walking. We got to the Sukamulya trail-head in about 1 hour after leaving the main roads. There’s a registration post and it was open, so we paid our entrance fees. There was a forest fire in the vicinity about 8-10 days ago, but the fire had been put off and the area is back to open. We could still smell the smoke from several places so it was not completely off.

We only had about 350 m elevation gain over 1 km distance to reach the summit, so I anticipated a “giver”. This turned out to be more involved than I thought, but it’s still an easy ascent after all. Adam opted to not even bring his backpack. The crux of this ascent was the heat, as we were now in the afternoon and the elevation of this mountain is under 1000 m. We were both drenched from the sweats but thankfully at least half of the route was in the shades. There were also enough varieties to keep us entertained, and the route felt more like in Squamish than in Indonesia. The true summit of Gn. Bongkok is a short 3rd class scramble on a large boulder and was very fun. The view towards Gn. Parang is extremely impressive and we soon learnt that most, if not all climbers including the via-ferrata climbers do not ascend the true summit of that peak. The true summit might actually be a dauntingly difficult climb that does not have much “beta” available. Our driver knows a direct (not the easiest) route but it’s apparently a 5.11 climb.

The view was unfortunately blocked by the smoke that we could barely see the outlines of the few reservoirs nearby, so we didn’t linger too long up there. The descent was straightforward and uneventful. We finished Gn. Bongkok at around 3 pm but did not get back to Jakarta until 9 pm due to horrific traffics. Petter had warned Adam about the traffic in West Java but we had been extremely lucky in the past month, that we had completely forgotten we were back in the greater Jakarta area. The worst traffic that we encountered ended up being on the last day in Indonesia.