Climbing Mt. Batur…!!

Patti and Krista just before we set off for the western rim of Batur's caldera...

"Whose idea was it to be up this early...??"

The day we climbed up Bali’s most active volcano, Mount Batur, began at the un-Godly hour of 2.15 am, when the alarm had me levitating off the bed and almost becoming entangled in the mosquito netting…

An hour later, together with Krista, who lives next door and also works at Como, we were collected by a driver and taken to meet the guides waiting for us at the Como resort.

Once again, Mudra and Wanarta would be showing the younger guides the ropes, just as they had done at Tirta Empul during the Water Cleansing Ceremony…

We drove north for over and hour and then down into Batur’s huge caldera in complete darkness, along the narrow, twisting road that ran alongside the lake trapped in the volcano’s immense “bowl”, and arrived at the Parks Board Office at a little before 4.00am…

Mudra leads the way towards the lower slopes of Batur...

With a local guide in tow, and carrying torches which Mudra had distributed among us, we left the parking area and headed up the gently sloping path towards where I assumed the inner rim of the volcano lay…

Apart from the path and it’s immediate surrounds which showed up in our torchlight, there was nothing else to see for the first hour of our hike…

The path wound up through a sparse stand of pine trees and long grass, then became steeper and narrower… By now we had settled into a steady pace, the joking and light banter from earlier, forgotten… This was not going to be the proverbial “walk in the park”…!!

Far ahead and above us, their torchlight like  strings of pearls on a black background, two group of hikers toiled up the volcano’s upper slopes…

I glanced up at them in disbelief, for the first time realizing how much steeper the path would still get, and how much further we still had to go… Behind me, Patti was having a difficult time negotiating the hundreds of steps we were grinding up… Without much respite, almost each step we took was up, very seldom did we encounter a level patch of ground more than two steps across, and when we did, Patti took a short break…

This had gone on for over an hour, and I was taking strain myself, happy to be hanging back with Mudra to match Patti’s slower pace, while Warnata, Kristal and the other guides went on ahead of us… I recalled the many hikes I had undertaken in South Africa’s Drakensberg and Maluti Mountains, and those in the Magaliesberg and Lebombo Mountains as well, and knew that a steady and consistent pace and stride was what got you through the tougher sections of any hike or climb…

The previous week, Patti had been experiencing unusual abdominal pain, and after a few days of this, I had convinced her to visit a doctor and have some blood tests done… Among other things, we discovered that her blood haemoglobin count was at a startlingly low 7.4 instead of the usual 12 to 14…!!

Battling up Batur, my anaemic partner’s blood was not delivering enough oxygen to her muscles, and she tired very quickly… Despite this she would not give up and struggled gamely on, resting often, and occasionally uttering a few words which I would rather not print here, but which made us all realize how determined she was to get to the top…

This was one lady who was not giving up…!!

After a grueling few hours, the last half hour made in swirling mist, we made it to the top...

The last few hundred metres of the hike were the most difficult, as the path up to the rim went up at a forty five degree angle, and was covered in small loose shards of lava… I avoided looking up to see how much further we had to go, and focused instead on watching my one foot step up in front of the other…

The temperature had dropped by at least five degrees as we crested the rim and most of the folk who had arrived before us were unpacking their windbreakers and rain gear…

The air up at 1 700 metres above sea level was also thinner, which had not helped Patti’s cause much on the steep ascent. We had begun the climb at about 500 m.a.s.l., and in less than two hours had got up to our presnt height over a distance of no more than three or four kilometres…!!

"What the hell...!! You call this breakfast...?? Who on earth would expect me to be eating Asparagus at 6.00 am...??"

"Ah... There's the culprit who made all the breakfast arrangements...!! Patti...you got dome 'splaining to do....!!"

While we waited for the sun to rise, our guides handed a metal container to each of us, which contained three separate smaller containers that held our breakfast… The hard climb had given me quite an appetite, so as you can imagine, I was looking forward to and believed I had earned a hearty breakfast…!!

I recoiled in horror at my first gander at what I discovered in my container…!! Dismayed at the thought of eating vegetables at 6.00am in the morning, I looked around to see if I had not got someone’s vegan meal by mistake… Smiling sweetly from her perch against a large rock, Patti informed me that we were all having the same, and that I should get all thoughts of bacon and eggs out of my head immediately…!!

My groans of discontent echoed off the rocks around us as I began moving the asparagus around to see if there was something more palatable in the bottom of my dish…

The sky begins to lighten just as the clouds move in...

A light wind sent clouds scudding across the sky as dawn broke over the Agung Volcano to the east of us… We could still see the lights of the village far below us, and Lake Batur slowly came into view as the light improved… Through gaps in the cloud we saw flashes of the sunrise, which were just as suddenly obliterated by the moving clouds…

By now other groups of hikers had arrived, swelling the crowd at the viewing point… We stood cameras in hand, waiting for the perfect shot of the sunrise, which for most people, never came…

Despite the thick cloud that hung about, the sun occasionally exploded through the gaps in the cloud cover...

Our guides, Warnata (bottom), Mudra (far right), with Ferry and Sudiarte in the centre...

Worth getting to the top for...!! (Photo: Warnata)

Living on the edge as usual...!!

A large troop of Macaques visited the viewing point to scrounge food from the hikers...

Still, the view from up on the rim was spectacular, and well worth the effort of hauling our tired bodies up there…

Our guides advised us to begin packing our foodstuff away, as with the coming dawn, the numerous troops of Macaques that lived up on these slopes would invade the viewing point, looking for food and anything else they could get their grubby little hands on…

No sooner did they mention this, than we were surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of these small monkeys… They appeared from every nook and cranny, and unafraid of people, perched within inches of where we were sitting or standing, just waiting for an opportunity to dart in and grab a morsel from out of unsuspecting hands…!!

The local guide led us over a rocky area to where steam was venting from various cracks and fissures on the rim of a smaller caldera… We clambered down to a cave where bats clung to ceiling, and then went over to take a few photos on the very edge of a long drop-off… From there we could look down into a large crater where yet more steam was venting into the early morning air… It was a strange feeling knowing that under our feet the volcano was very much alive…!!

For the moment, we were on top of our world...

There was even time for a bit of aerobics...!!

After watching the sun climb higher into the morning sky, we began the descent from Batur… We hiked back past the viewing point, which by now was emptying of hikers, and started down the steepest section. We could see the lava fields from previous eruptions spread out in the valley below us… Lake Batur gleamed out in the middle distance, and Mount Agung stood proudly on the eastern horizon…

Looking out over the lava field left by Batur's last eruption...

Bali's highest mountain, the Agung Volcano became visible as the clouds drifted away... At one point we were even able to make out the peak of the Rinjani Volcano on Lombok Island, many miles away...

Going down was as tough on the knees and hamstrings as clambering up had been… In front of us, we witnessed a young guy slip and fall on the loose stones underfoot… He managed to do this a number of times over the next few minutes which served to make us take even more care as we negotiated the very steep path…

By this time the cloud cover had all but been blown away, and we made the last part of the hike back to the car in glorious sunshine…

"Ok Wanarta, ...but just a few...!! If Ibu Patricia sees me eating chips this early in the morning, there will be hell to pay....!!"

We got back to the parking area barely half an hour after starting our descent, and then rested awhile before folding our tired bodies into the car and beginning the hour long drive back to Ubud… I was especially proud of the fact that Patti had not given up and could only imagine the struggle she had gone through to get to the top…

At one point when I had turned around to she how she was doing, her face was as pale as a ghost’s, eyes wide open and mouth gasping for air… I seriously considered turning back and escorting her down the mountain, but she wasn’t having any of it… My girl was a fighter…!!

"Made it..!!". I was as proud of Patti as she was of herself...

Back in Ubud, and after a quick shower, we headed back to Como to meet our good friends, Charles and his mother Terri, for lunch… Weeks earlier, I had met Charles in the middle of a traffic jam in Denpasar, when he sidled up to the Big Fella on his own bike and asked me where I was going… He then very kindly led me to the computer store I was looking for, and while Patti’s laptop was being repaired, he and I retired to a nearby restaurant to have lunch…

We had become firm friends, and bumped into each other a number of times during the next few weeks… We attended the opening of an art exhibition in Ubud together, and then enjoyed sunset drinks on Legian beach one evening after another chance encounter… We kept in contact and knowing that I would be leaving Bali soon, had arranged to meet for lunch at Como…

Charles and his mother Terri joined us for lunch at Como Shambhala...

By this time my Achilles tendons, hip flexors and other sundry parts, were letting me know how annoyed they were at having to leg it up Batur earlier that same morning, so I was hobbling around at an even slower pace than that of Charles’s delightful 84 year old mother…!!

Terri had spent a good deal of her life traveling around the world, and had sailed a boat around the Caribbean with her husband for best part of 25 years…!! Both Patti and I enjoyed her forthright manner and the many stories she had to tell of her travels…

Charles had for all intents and purposes settled here in Bali after a successful life in Boston, and was in the process of building and renovating his home down on the beach near Legian…

Despite the smiles, we were still feeling the effects of our climb up Batur earlier that morning...

We enjoyed an excellent lunch, during which Charles provided Patti and I with silk scarves as goodbye presents, before heading back to Denpasar from where they would be flying to Europe for a few weeks of touring…

For Patti, the day was far from over, as she still had a few classes to teach and needed to make arrangements for other yoga and Pilates teachers to take her place for the next few days… We would be flying to Java at 6.00am the next morning, and when we returned, Patti was scheduled for surgery at the Bali Royal Hospital a day after that…!!

All in all, we were in for an interesting week ahead to say the least…!!

©GBWT 2011