Gunung Raung

[simage=2293,200,n,left,]We joined another great Java Lava trip to East Java’s Gunung Raung, probably Java’s most seldom climbed mountain over 3,000 m. Raung is the larger neighbor to the more famous Gunung Ijen, which is where you see the iconic photos of sulphur miners emerging from the crater.

Raung has an amazing crater in its own right – 2 km across and around 500 m deep with sheer cliffs all around. The true summit of Raung is very difficult to scale, requiring ropes and several days to reach. We hiked up to the usual viewpoint of the crater from the north, starting from Sumberwringin. Possibly the biggest challenge with Raung is getting to Sumberwringin, or more accurately escaping Surabaya and battling the traffic to Probolingo. It took us 5 hours to get this far, a journey that should take less than 3 hours. It took us 9.5 hours in total to get to Sumberwringin on a small bus with the usual issues of legroom not geared up for 6ft tall foreigners.

We got to Sumberwringin just before midnight, with a 5:30 am start looming. Luckily the Homestay and Losmen were excellent and we did get some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, both Gill and I were a little sick – a bug we picked up early in the week. It meant that the hike was pretty tough and we were slow. Starting at 1200 m, the trail is not too steep, but relatively long to climb up through pleasant, dry forest to the treeline campsite at around 2900 m. From here, the trail up the the crater rim gets steeper and up mostly bare rock. There are a few drop offs, but it’s not a dangerous climb. The view from the crater rim at around 3200 m is amazing. The sheer crumbling cliffs are similar to Tambora on Sumbawa. The bottom of the crater has another crater inside, which itself seems to be no longer active. The true summit to the south is marked by some distinctive jagged pillars of rock. It’s well worth the climb a really a remote place on such a crowded island. In fact, this whole eastern part of Java is much more sparsely populated and really quite dry.

After soaking up the crater rim, we descended back to the campsite. We could see Ijen to the east and the interesting massif of Argopuro to the west. Banks of clouds rolled in around the base of Raung below us. The sunset from the campsite was magnificent – the sun sinking behind Argopuro and the sky brilliant scarlet. The evening light lingered and the temperatures were not cold given the elevation. We needed an early night to get some strength up for the quick decent in the morning and car back to Surabaya. The morning was also fabulous, with red morning sunlight hitting the outer rock faces of the crater.

Mercifully, the journey back was smooth. The motorbikes ordered to pick us up from the trailhead to Sumberwringin never arrived, but luckily there were some farm hands with motorbikes willing to unload all their bundles of grass animal feed and take to meet our driver. Sunday was the day before Ramadan, and the roads were quiet. We made it to the airport in four hour, changed our tickets to an earlier flight and were back in Bogor by 9 pm.

We are keen to head back to this part of Java and climb Argopuro and Ijen. The list of trips is growing not shrinking shrinking and we only have 5 months left!
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