Carstensz Pyramid 11/24/08 dispatch

Greet­ings from Indone­sia! This is Mark writ­ing in from our hotel in Bali where the team all arrived over the last 24 hours, except for Pablo; who will be arriv­ing from Sin­ga­pore tomor­row morning. 

Expe­di­tion train­ing pool­side

I arrived on sched­ule on the 22^nd and spent the first cou­ple of days work­ing out details with our local out­fit­ter and buy­ing food for the trip. We have a mas­sive pile of com­fort foods, tasty snacks and items that we won’t be able to buy on our main shop­ping trip when we reach Timi­ka. It is hot and extreme­ly humid here, with spells of tor­ren­tial rain, but that does­n’t stop dozens of avid surfers from enjoy­ing the great waves along Kuta beach right behind the hotel. 

Pro­vi­sions

Surfs up

I had a bit of sun yes­ter­day and relaxed by the pool while read­ing over Hein­rich Har­rer’s account of his suc­cess­ful first ascent of Carsten­sz Pyra­mid back in 1962. Our over­land approach will be sim­i­lar in nature to his and we are very excit­ed about the upcom­ing adven­ture. Every­one is a bit weary from their long flights, but we went out for a nice din­ner of tra­di­tion­al Indone­sian food at a local land­mark called Made’s Warung. Joe and Bill enter­tained us at din­ner with their accounts of ear­li­er attempts on this peak and they both are fired up to take care of unfin­ished busi­ness to the sum­mit. Our impromp­tu ori­en­ta­tion meet­ing over din­ner went well and I think we have a very cohe­sive group. 

The Pool in Padma

Tomor­row we will trav­el to the town of Ubud to expe­ri­ence more Bali­nese cul­ture and take in the sights. It will be a mel­low day so we can make final prepa­ra­tions for our mid­night depar­ture to the air­port tomor­row night. We are sched­uled for a 2:00 a.m. flight to Timi­ka with Garu­da air­lines on Wednes­day. Fol­low­ing that, we are hop­ing to catch our char­ter flight in a twin otter up to Sug­a­pa vil­lage where our trek and the real adven­ture begins. Every­one is healthy, hap­py and excit­ed to get things under­way. I will try to send some shots from our excur­sion in Ubud tomorrow.