How to get there:
The nearest convenient town is Pramaoy, located about 13 kilometer from the
house where the locaal guide lives. His house is on the right hand side of the
road when driving south from Pramaoy, located near N12.20016, E103.11550.
From here, one continues on the guide motorcycle,
first south on the main road, then off to the right on smaller farm roads in order
to arrive at a farm building near location N12.17977, E103.10161,
elevation 300 meter.
This is the trailhead, my guide preferred to walk from here.
Route description: Note:
The route follows a (rough) farm road many kilometer.
This road gets rougher along the
way, but there are clear tracks showing that locals sometimes drive quite high. The road
becomes quite impassable during the wet season.
Continue along the farm road, at a clear fork turn right and descend to a small
river. In the wet season, this may have to be waded, when I was there (March) one
could easily pass on some rocks to the left. Continue to follow this road as it climbs uphill
and eventually ends in a small clearing.
The route continues (very overgrown) sort of left, a track (see below) or a local
guide is quite essential. After climbing a steepish section among bamboo logs followed
by another uphill that have more rocks, the route arrives at a campsite about one
kilometer (straight line distance) from the summit. The final section runs gently uphill,
sometimes quite close to the steep face on climbers right to gain a pretty distinct
summit having a fairly old looking marker
on its highest point.
A track is posted on Peakbagger.
Comments:
I got up around 0500 (hotel in Pramaoy), and we drove around 13 kilometer south to the
house of my local guide. His wife was already well on her way with breakfast, ready around
0530. Nice home made food, we enjoyed this while waiting for daylight. We departed shortly after 0600 on
the small motorcycle that the guide would drive. It was supposed to be dry season now, I expected
the farm road to be much less muddy, having read the trip report from 3 years back by Rob.
He estimated that with less mud one should be able to drive up to around 600 m of elevation.
My surprise was definitely genuine when my guide parked his bike at a farm, and told me
that we should walk from here. Rob had suggested that even with very much mud in the wet season,
one should drive to the first (and only major) river crossing. It was immediately clear that this
hike would be longer than I had expected.
We walked by 0630, same time as on Aoral 2 days ago. Fortuneately, we arrived at the river
fairly soon, then I knew that Rob had been driven about 2 more kilometer. Thus, it seemed my
ascent would be slightly more than 5 kilometer extra. The morning was nice, sunny, but still not
very hot. The mountain was
clearly visible up on the right hand side.
My uphill pace was slightly faster than my guide, but a couple of short breaks made
him catch up and we arrived at the end of the farm road after roughly 2 hours. We continued along
a trail that looked like it had been a road at some time, but now severely overgrown. After 5 minutes,
a trail forked 90 degrees right and led to some sort of camp. I never understood why we took this small
detour, after 5 minutes we returned the same way back to the main trail.
After crossing an almost
dry creek, the trail pretty much disappeared.
My guide carried a big machete and he used it frequently.
It seemed that nobody had been here for quitke some time.
The rest of the way may best be described as a route, marked
with a machete on various tree trunks.
My guide followed this precisely, however a person new to this
area would easily loose it unless carefully navigating with a gps generated track.
The terrain alternated between pretty flat sections and steeper ascents. Never difficult, but to stick
to the established route seemed important.
We had been walking for almost 4 hours when we arrived at a second,
somewhat more inviting camp. This
location (N12.14854, E103.04646) was roughly one kilometer (straight line) from the summit and 260 vertical meter below.
Another rest was called by my guide. While still sitting here, it started raining. We left and the water was
now coming down like your bathroom shower. Soaked in 2 minutes. The route was quite nice and gentle and one could
trace an outline of a trail most of the way. We were on the summit
at 1115, so 4:45 up including several stops.
Leaving after 5 minutes, we descended back to the shelter where my guide needed to have his lunch.
We did hope that the rain would end, but no answer to our prayers. After about 15 minutes, we continued
down. Finally, when reaching the farm road, the rain stopped.
This was more
than 3 hours after it started.
Many leeches had jumped on us as well, I removed more than 20, however 3 or 4 still made
it to some blood, only one near my anckle had filled up substantially.
Back at the farm house 1530, about 4 hours excluding the stop for lunch.
Finally back at the guide's house where my driver had been waiting several hours, at 1600. Total
trip time from the car and back about 10 hours.
