Climb Indo
Pia
who ran the Australian leg of the global challenge expedition with Fi hangs
up her Hot Rock spurs and Boud the diminutive Dutchman takes the helm in Bali.
He takes up the tale of the round the world trips passage through Indonesia
So I’m back in the Hot Rock boat, as we would say it in Holland! Less
than a month after Dave asked me if I wanted to become Fi’s right hand
I was in Bali, celebrating my second Hot Rock new years eve in a row. It is
very nice to see that there are still some familiar faces on the truck from
South America and that Hot Rock is also able to survive in the developed world.
So there we were in Indonesia, a country known for the humid weather, tropical
forest, big volcanoes and rice paddies, but will there also be rock to climb?
Research and the internet didn't’t give us much information, so while
most group members were climbing Mount Bromo (sounds impressive, but from
what I heard it’s more like a walk on the beach, but with stunning views
into an active volcano crater) me and Gary went ahead to find any climbing
contacts.
We ended up in Malang, East Java, where there should be some crags around. From the local students climbing club we got more information and off we went to our first crag in Lembah Kera, which translates to Monkey Valley. Lembah Kera is a beautiful place. Between the banana trees and the palm trees there is a slightly overhanging wall, some 50 meters high and about 100 meters long. There were only a few routes, most of them with pretty dodgy looking bolts, but the places offers lots of potential.
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However, as our beloved Big Red Truck was not with us in Indonesia and the
truck was still the home of our mean machine (
the
Hilti), we could not do anything with all that virgin rock… However,
we did test the routes that were there, and got a real good idea of what tropical
adventure climbing is like: If your route runs to a cave and there is an owl
in that cave having a nice little sleep, be really quiet, because if he wakes
up he’ll shit on you and your belayer!
The
other crag near Malang is called Tebing Prangan. The story of this crag is
more or less the same (including the owls), lots of good quality rock, with
only a few routes on it. And once again we were dying to have the Hilti there.
The only downside of this crag was that the local mosque was constantly shouting
out prayers through the speakers, trying to reach the people living in the
whole country, as it seemed.
Our next destination was the village of Cihuni, to climb Tebing Parang. This
is a 300-400 meter high wall, consisting of andesite volcanic rock. The wall
starts with steep slabs with little features and becomes steeper and overhanging
as you get higher up. According to our information, there should be a few
established multipitch climbs there, but after a closer look, all routes require
a reasonable amount of aid-climbing. Fine, we can do that, were it not that
all people with aid-gear shipped their racks to Singapore from Australia…
Trying to free-climb the mossy (still rainy season) first pitch resulted in
a fall from Kev, who in a last effort to hold on, dislocated his shoulder.
While Kev and Fi took the more sensible option of flying to Malaysia to prepare
the coming of the truck, we carried on bussing into Sumatra. After a nightmare
30+ hours bus journey we arrived in Bukittinggi. The next day we only had
to drive another hour to arrive in Harau Valley, home to the most developed
climbing area in Indonesia. Harau Valley was again a beautiful place: Rice
paddies, waterfalls, Black Gibbons swinging through the trees. Imagine that
and add some reasonably bolted sport climbs and you get a perfect place to
spend another 3 days. The rock in Harau Valley is conglomerate, which is always
interesting because you often can’t tell whether a hold is going to
come off or not. After a few climbs we learned that the rock is actually quite
solid so we had a go at the harder routes as well. Indonesians don’t
bolt many routes, and apparently they save their bolts for their projects,
because there were a lot of routes that we could only dream of climbing. After
another bus journey and a quick ferry we were in Malaysia. But thats another
story.
Text by the Beduin Doctor
