Mt Wilhelm

As mentioned in my last post, last weekend I went on a hike up the highest mountain in PNG, Mt Wilhelm. There were 6 of us that went, and it was a very fun bunch of people to go with. In order to get to the hut before dark we needed to leave Ukarumpa bright and early, so we met at 6am and loaded the Hilux and by 6:30 we were on our way. Thankfully, we had no holdups and had a very smooth trip for the first 4 hours, we didn't even hit too many potholes. Then the fun started. Once we turned off the Highlands Highway at Kundiawa the road became much more interesting. This road was not sealed at all and was full of large bumps and mud puddles, not the kind of road you would go down without 4WD. Chris seemed to enjoy driving down this road. After about 2 hours of driving down this windy, steep, rocky, at times muddy road we made it to Keglsugl where we found parked the hilux and started the hike to the hut.

The hike up to the hut was a relatively simple hike, much like a lot of the bush walks around New Zealand. It took around 3 1/2 hours, including a few stops to re-hydrate and to admire the view. Most of the hike was through bush, very similar looking to the Waitakare Ranges in Auckland at points, with lots of ferns around. Near the end of the hike the trail went through a meadow with just a few ferns dotted around, it looked very much like something out of Jurassic Park. At the end of this meadow kind of thing was a pretty cool waterfall, then a little further on was the hut, nestled in at the base of a hill, a minutes walk away from the beautiful lake.

At this point I experienced being cold for the first time in PNG, sure I had felt slightly nippy a couple of times in Ukarumpa before, but nothing I would really classify as cold. This was cold, so cold in fact that I decided that it was cold enough to wear socks on my hands. Still it wasn't quite cold enough to change out of shorts.

We decided to explore our surroundings a little before it got dark, so we went on a little walk down to the lake. The lake was almost perfectly still, and a very good mirror reflection could be seen of the hills behind the lake. It was really quite a magnificent site. It would almost be worth doing the hike just to the hut to see the view there, although once you factor in the hours of driving to get to the start of the hike I think the cost/benefit ratio would not be looking all that favourable. So I guess what I am saying is if you happen to be driving past Keglsugl it would be well worth stopping and hiking up to the hut. The odds of you just so happening to be driving past are not all that high though so I guess most of this paragraph is kind of useless.

After admiring the lake we went back to the hut to eat dinner. We decided to go for the good old PNG staple of rice with instant noodles and tuna. Not exactly a gourmet meal, but it tasted just fine to us. Then after dinner we took an early night to try and get at least a couple of hours of shut-eye before starting the hike to the summit.

At 12am we all reluctantly stumbled out of bed in the freezing cold and got ourselves organised for the hike. We had prepared some breakfast bars a few days before so we all chowed in to them. They tasted pretty good, although a little on the sweet side for my liking. At 12:30 we were all ready for the hike so set off following our guides for the 5-6 hour hike to the highest point in PNG.

After about 1/2 an hour it became apparent that the breakfast bars were not sitting favourably for most of us, and the realisation was made that we didn't bring enough toilet paper to adequately deal with the aftermath of the breakfast bars. At around about that stage Lisa decided to turn back to the hut, hiking at that altitude can be tough and she was finding it really difficult. We sent one of the guides back with her, instructing him to catch us up and to bring extra toilet paper with him. Unfortunately that guide was also not feeling all that well and we suspect he decided to sleep for a couple of hours before heading back up the mountain. We caught up with him again about a quarter of the way back down again.

I don't really have much to say about the next 4 hours or so. The hike wasn't really all that difficult, although it was pretty tiring, especially as I had my pack on my back with a big bottle of water, a bunch of clothes that I had taken off after I warmed up a little, some chocolate and as I found after returning to the hut a loaf of banana bread. Hiking in the dark is not the most pleasant of experiences either, you don't get to enjoy the view so much and you don't really see much of where you are heading. Only having 3 hours sleep (and interrupted sleep at that) didn't help much either.

At around 5am Chris and Andrea decided they were feeling too sick to continue up the mountain. We stopped and discussed what we should do, whether we should split up, or whether we should all just turn back. A couple of minutes before this we had passed a plaque in memory of some chap who died on the mountain. He had twisted his ankle and remained behind while the rest of his group went to the summit. It is assumed that he must have tried finding his own way back down the mountain and fallen in to a ravine. This plaque made me more than just a little reluctant to leave Chris and Andrea to find their own way down in the dark. After 30 minutes of deliberation we decided to start heading back down the mountain again, we had failed. After hiking down for 5 or so minutes we stopped again and the deliberations started up again. By this time the first sign of sunrise could be seen and I was convinced by the others that it would now be safe enough for Chris and Andrea to find their own way back down the mountain. So Deb, Matt and I turned around and started to head back up. During the deliberation we were told that we still had a good 3 hours to go. Fortunately this was proven to be a bit of an exaggeration and we were able to make it to the summit by 7am.

The view from the top was breathtaking, or maybe that was the hike up the mountain. Either way I was breathing pretty hard by the time I reached the top. It was a gorgeous day, unusually clear for Mt Wilhelm that late in the morning. We could see all the way to Karkar island, and a bunch of other places a long way away. Some of the valleys had swirly clouds in them and looked really cool. We stayed up the top for 30 minutes or so before slowly starting our hike back down to the hut. We were all absolutely exhausted by this stage, so the walk down seemed to be a lot more difficult than the walk up was. On a couple of occasions I managed to sneak in a few minutes of sleep. Our guide was feeling pretty lousy by this stage, I think he had a really bad headache, and we found we were pretty much ahead of him for most of the trip down. At one point he fell asleep and Deb had quite a job trying to wake him up.

Finally we made it down to the hut by around 11am and had a spot of lunch, pasta with tomato pasta sauce. I then played Rook (a card game) for a while before taking a long nap.

I won't describe the rest of the trip in detail as it was nothing particularly noteworthy and this blog is long enough already and I have another blog entry I want to write after this one.

All in all the trip was well worthwhile and I enjoyed it. In saying that, I never want to do it again, it is definitely a once in a lifetime trip for me.