Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 8, 2023

1602m

Java, Indonesia

Gunung Muria dominates the Muria Peninsula on the north coast of Central Java and boasts over 1500 m prominence making it one of the 17 “ultra prominent peaks” on the Java island. The elevation of this peak itself is barely higher than the prominence as the range is completely detached from the rest of the island. “Muria” actually is the name of the entire massif with at least a dozen individual peaks, and the highest peak is Puncak Songolikur. For Adam and I only the highest peak matters. Our reference was once again, Rob Woodall’s trip report and GPX track on peakbagger.com. There are apparently a few ways to reach this summit, but the shortest and the easiest is from the small village of Rahtawu to the south. This is about an hour’s slow drive on paved, but narrow roads from Kudus. The roads are just wide enough for vehicular traffics and a driver with excellent driving skill is essential.

While I was away for 2 days in Singapore to bag the country’s high point Adam stayed in Semarang and booked our private driver for the next few days. Further research led me believe that it’s actually possible to ride ojeks (motorcycles) up the trails from Rahtawu although I had no clue if the locals were willing to take passengers and how far up could ojeks reach. For the worst case scenario we would hike from the bottom like how Rob and Deividas did, but we preferred to take whatever to shorten the hike. It has been 3 weeks since we started the trip and we had only 1 legit “rest day” without doing any hiking or travelling and that’s it. The driver was about 40 minutes late in the morning as he needed to pump up one of the tires. We thought that’s just an excuse as pumping up a tire should take no more than 10 minutes, but we decided to forgive him this time. Adam and I had hardly any tolerance for people being late. Once the driver showed up we were actually quite satisfied about his English and the vehicle. The drive to Kudus took a while and the drive on this narrow roads was as slow as I was expecting. The driver helped us to arrange two ojeks for both the ascent and the descent in that village, and the deal was surprisingly cheap.

About 20 minutes later the two ojek riders showed up. They promised to drive us all the way to Pandu Pewayangan at 1350 m. I had some doubts but whether that’s true or not it’s shaping up to become a very short objective. The drivers were skillful but drove very fast, that both Adam and I were glad that this wasn’t our first ride in this trip. The trail was steep, narrow and exposed with many places where a fall could be fatal. They indeed got us to 1350 m where the trail ahead was clearly not built for ojeks anymore. With only 250 m elevation gain left we told them to pick us up in one hour. The communication was difficult as none of them spoke any English. I wrote “11 AM” on my phone while pointing on the ground and they eventually figured out what I meant, somehow. I thought they’d be waiting at this spot for our return, but they wanted to drive down and then come back up.

The ascent was a little bit more involved than I thought. The temperature was hot and the humidity was brutal, that we both felt the lack of energy. We were very glad that we did not hike up from the bottom. The trail was also narrow and somewhat exposed at places. There were fixed lines and handrails but those were very sketchy looking. It was definitely safer to use our own hands and feet even though it might be slower this way. We eventually topped out the summit ridge and traversed easily to the true summit. There was a lot of structures on the summit area including a temple and a warung. The warung would be excellent but it wasn’t open. I’ve read elsewhere that Gn. Muria is a very popular objective among the locals but we only encountered one hiker and that’s it.

We actually didn’t have a lot of spare time as we promised to be back in 1 hour, so we made a hasty retreat. Descending those slippery and exposed sections did require some careful work. One of the ojek drivers indeed showed up at 11 am but the other one did not arrive until 20 minutes later. The downhill ride was just as fun and exhilarating as the uphill, and in about 20 minutes we were back to the trail-head. The objective was finished, but the day was only halfway done, as we had a long ass drive ahead to our next hotel at the pass between Sumbing and Sindoro on the west side of Semarang. This driver somehow wanted us to pay the gas fees but Adam had clearly inquired his daily rate based on “including everything”. I understood that the gas price isn’t cheap here and we had been driving a long ways but we must follow the previously agreed contract, so the driver eventually gave in.