Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 4, 2023

1894m

Java, Indonesia

The sole reason that Adam and I did this peak was because it boasts over 600 m prominence, as otherwise we wouldn’t have noticed it. There are simply too many mountains in Java and we had to filter the objectives by prominence. We weren’t even planning to do the P600m objectives but this one had a few trip reports, and Rob Woodall had done it two times so there must have something special. It turned out to be a drive-up mechanized ascent by motorcycles and it’s a very popular touristy attraction. There is a way to hike this objective, but I think driving a motorcycle up is the only worthy way, as you wouldn’t be able to get this kind of experience elsewhere. The summit is occupied by restaurants and other kinds of touristy stuffs, and to gain the true summit one must purchase an additional ticket.

This was the secondary objective of the day after bagging Gn. Ungaran. We directed our driver using Google Map but as usual, Google preferred taking short-cuts wherever feasible. We ended up driving over an hour on extremely windy, narrow and steep roads and for more than once I thought we had to turn around to take the longer way. Thankfully the entire way was paved despite the narrowness so we were able to make it through. Upon arriving at the base of Telomoyo we started to realize the popularity of this objective. There were at least 10 Jeeps and motorcycles available for renting, without the need to make any online reservation. The initial plan was to ride on the back seats of these ojeks (motorcycles), but there wasn’t any available driver. The alternative solution was for Adam to drive me up, but then why not to learn driving that thing myself. I had absolutely no experience with motorcycles but I did have some biking experience. After trying it out for about 5 minutes in the parking lot I decided to accept the challenge and drive the motorcycle up by myself, so we together rented two of them.

It took me several minutes to get into the rhythm and I have to say that riding the motorcycle was far easier than I thought. The entire road was paved and reasonably wide, so that helped. The the incoming traffics were actually the biggest risks as there were countless blind corners. The grade was also quite steep at places but the ojek had more than enough power to handle that. The only downside was the lack of view because we entered the clouds layer. At this elevation it’s almost guaranteed to be cloudy in the afternoon so there’s nothing we could do about that. We did pay that extra fee to tag the true summit, and then spent another half an hour eating some chicken soups.

I thought the downhill would be harder because I would need to break, but it turned out to be actually easier than the uphill. The descent felt very similar to mountain biking, so I actually passed most of the riders ahead of me and made some quick work down to the bottom. Adam was a few minutes behind. We had considered to do the 3rd objective of the day, but given the heat and the lateness we opted to drive straight to the hotel to prepare for the long hike on the following day. This turned out to be a good call as we really didn’t have that much of extra time.