Brightest of Silver Linings: Climbing Carstensz Pyramid In Papua At Age 65. Carol Masheter
Franky had brought us rubber boots for the jungle hike, a tangible sign of progress. I already had my own mud boots and decided to use them instead of the flimsy ones Franky had brought. He said he was about to go shopping for food we would need in the jungle. Dennis reminded Franky that he ate four boiled eggs every day for breakfast. Finally we were making progress toward getting near the peak.
After the daily ritual of dodging traffic to cross the street to buy bottled water, I used an ancient PC under the stairs behind the hotel’s front desk to email friends and my sister. I wanted them to know that we were leaving Timika at last. The PC was very slow, but my emails were eventually sent. Afterwards, I paddled around in the little pool, sometimes swimming, sometimes running in slow motion in the waist-deep shallow end. If it was good conditioning for race horses, I reasoned, it was good conditioning for me. Carina joined me. Dennis came and sat on the pool’s edge. Carina convinced him to swim with us. For the first time in days, Dennis smiled and seemed almost friendly. Perhaps our team was coming together at last.
That afternoon I saw at least a half dozen small planes flying overhead. What happened to “no planes fly on Sunday?” I thought bitterly. Someone is jerking us around again. Get over it, I coached myself. Tomorrow we will fly to Sugapa and start hiking toward the mountain. We are making progress!
March 12, 2012. As usual, the muezzin’s electronic call to prayer woke me up at 4:15 a.m. I could not get back to sleep, but I made myself stay in bed. The next few days could be very demanding. I needed to rest, even if sleep eluded me. I envied Carina’s ability to sleep through Timika’s pre-dawn noise.
Our morning drive to the airport was quiet. We each were in our own heads, like the electric stillness just before the starter’s gun at a foot race. At the Timika Airport, we unloaded our packs and duffels and followed Franky into the domestic terminal. It was smaller, darker, and grubbier than I had remembered when we had arrived from Bali. Then I realized that we had arrived from Bali at Timika’s international terminal.
As we waited for our flight, the dimly lit waiting area filled with passengers, mostly Papuans plus a few Indonesians. Most Papuan men, women, and children wore T-shirts and shorts, the result of missionary work in the 1960s. Their bare feet were broad and tough from a lifetime of going without shoes. Though most adults were several inches shorter than me, the men had well-defined upper bodies with bulging biceps and lean, sinuous legs. The women were stout from years of childbearing and hard work. Many women carried a large string bag supported by a strap across their forehead. Children were lean and slender. Some Papuans reminded me of Australian aborigines with deep-set, dark eyes, beaky noses, and short, tightly curled black hair. Other Papuans had large eyes and softer, more rounded features. I wondered whether the sharp-featured people and the rounded-featured people belonged to different tribes.
Sweat soaked through my long-sleeved shirt and hiking pants. My feet slipped inside my rubber mud boots, as sweat saturated my socks. I drank all the water in one of my one-liter water bottles and resisted drinking from my other bottle. I wanted to save some water, until we could locate more in Sugapa.
I found an empty spot in a bank of plastic seats and sat down. A Papuan woman came over and indicated with gestures that she would like a picture taken of her with me. I smiled and nodded. She sat down next to me, squashed her body against mine, and draped her arms around my neck, while her friends chattered, laughed, and pointed at us. I felt uncomfortable, not being accustomed to such physical closeness with a complete stranger. Then I felt a bit guilty about the times I had photographed local people. Had I been insensitive or intrusive? I hoped not. Acrid cigarette smoke flowed into the waiting area from Papuan smokers standing in the doorway. The smoke burned my raw throat and sinuses, symptoms of a cold that had started last night, a new worry about beginning our challenging jungle hike. I preferred to be alone with my own thoughts, but I smiled wanly at the Papuan woman, not wanting to spoil her fun, as Carina photographed us.
After a long, restless wait, Kevin got the signal that our plane was ready. We grabbed our climbing packs, wove through the crowd of waiting passengers, past security guards, and exited a chain-link gate from the terminal to the airstrip. Excitement replaced the torpor of our indefinite waiting, as we speed-walked toward the little plane.
We each climbed the plane’s steep, narrow boarding ladder and squashed ourselves into cramped seats, a single seat on the left and two seats on the right. In my seat on the left side of the plane behind the cockpit, I held my climbing pack on my knees. I could see the pilot adjusting switches and levers for take-off. The plane’s engines roared, the runway slid past my window, and vibration inside the plane suddenly stopped, as we became airborne. We were on our way!
We flew over a broad, muddy river, curving like a python below, leaving the dull glint of metal roof tops in Timika behind. Our little plane cut through layers of clouds, as it gained elevation over thickly forested, steep mountains. I craned my neck, trying to catch a glimpse of Carstensz Pyramid, but it remained hidden in the clouds. After about 40 minutes, we seemed to be circling, flying repeatedly over a narrow green valley, which I glimpsed through breaks in the clouds. Then we were flying over flat terrain again, where the broad river below looked familiar. I could see the dull glint of metal roof tops. We were landing on a paved runway, not the expected dirt landing strip near Sugapa.
Confused, I exited the little plane in a crouch, trying not to fall down the steep ladder. My team mates and I walked back to the domestic terminal in numb silence. What had happened? Why were we back in Timika? Inside the terminal Kevin told us that the pilot did not have good enough visibility to land the plane on Sugapa’s dirt runway. My rational self I knew that risking a crash in poor visibility would have been crazy, but my irrational self was angry after the past several days of hopes that had been repeatedly raised and then dashed.
Inside the terminal building was very hot and stuffy. Angered by this most recent setback, I could not bear to stay inside. Outside the terminal building I found a scrawny little palm and sat listlessly in its thin strip of shade on muddy grass. What now? I wondered dully. My skin began to burn from the midday sun. I went back inside and joined the others. No one had much to say.
During a long wait for our duffels to be unloaded, we walked to a shabby patio near the terminal entrance and sat drinking warm Coca Cola. Kevin asked whether we wanted to try again tomorrow. Dennis repeated his concern about his knee trouble. Also, he had bought an older building in London and was renovating it as a guest house for visitors during the Olympic Games in London. He was eager to return to London and oversee that project. Carina repeated her concerns about her mother’s pancreatic cancer. I asked Kevin, “Could you run the hike for just me?” “No, that’s not an option,” he replied in a tone that signaled finality. I could understand his response, but I was very disappointed and angry. We had not gotten close enough to the mountain to see it, let alone climb it. “OK, then it’s over,” I said firmly, trying to be reasonable. “Let’s go back to Bali.”
From Bali, I hoped to get a flight to Sydney and climb Mount Kosciuszko, the highest peak in Australia, before I headed home. If I summited Kosciuszko, I would complete the original Bass list of the Seven Summits. Then my former colleague, Tom, could release our news alert announcing that I had become the oldest woman in the world to complete the Seven Summits. I would have preferred to finish with the more challenging Carstensz Pyramid, but since that was not going to happen on this trip, I hoped to at least try for Kosciuszko, before I met the press at the Salt Lake Airport.
Our small-plane pilot came over to our table and said he could try again to fly us to Sugapa, but we would need to leave now. I snapped out of my dark reverie. Another chance at Carstensz Pyramid? I’m in! Hope began to sputter back to life. After a tense pause, Kevin told the pilot that the group had decided against it. The pilot’s shoulders sagged. He turned and walked away. Again, my hope crashed and burned.
“Now I feel bad about ending the expedition,” Dennis said with a wide, teeth-flashing smile that seemed incongruent with the current mood. Perhaps his smile was masking nervous discomfort. Carina echoed similar concerns. Trying to keep the edginess out of my voice, I said, “You guys have major concerns about the jungle hike. I respect that. I am out voted. I don’t like it, but that is how it is. Let’s go back to Bali.” I tried to picture myself in their shoes, but I