At the Yellow Valley Base Camp!

Hello, from Carstensz Pyramid! The Madison Mountaineering team has arrived at the foot of the peak, settled into their camp for the night, and eyes a potential summit push as soon as tomorrow! After arriving in Timika a few days ago, the team called off one helicopter flight to camp due to cloudy weather, but made the most of their time by taking a boat trip down the river to a nomadic fishing community. Their patience paid off as the flight up to their base camp today was perfect! After arriving in camp and getting on the lower sections of the route, the team is fueling up and off to bed, prepared to wake up early tomorrow and go for the summit if weather allows. Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in with this dispatch from Carstensz Pyramid:

Hello! This is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Carstensz Pyramid (4884m/16,024ft) expedition – today is November 14.

Today, we flew to Yellow Valley Base Camp (4285m/14,050ft) at the foot of Carstensz Pyramid! We left our hotel about 5 a.m, headed to the airport. Skies were clear! So, two heli trips took the entire team up here to base camp. It’s really nice for all of us to be here together in one go! And we had a beautiful, scenic flight in. Really nice views of the Sudirman Range and our pilot took us right in over the massive open pit of the Freeport Mine, so we had really spectacular views of the mine itself – one of the largest gold mines in the world!

After we landed, we went for an acclimatization hike up the lower portion of the route, and went to the first ledge – to the first major ledge of the terrace system on the climbing route, then descended back to base camp as the rain was starting for the day. (We) just had lunch and now we’re relaxing until dinner. We will try for the summit tomorrow morning if the weather is good enough when we wake up.

Yeah, it’s been a really good trip so far! We arrived in Timika (31m/103ft) two nights ago. Yesterday, we tried to fly to base camp, but it was too cloudy. So instead, we went down to the river delta south of Timika and took a riverboat down to the edge of the Arafura Sea to visit a community of nomadic fishing people there. That was really spectacular, really beautiful on the river! We had a lot of fun at the village, saw a dugout canoe being being carved out.

And then, yeah, woke up and flew to base camp this morning. So the team is doing really well, and we’ll be in touch tomorrow!

Flying into the Sudirman Range (photo by Terray Sylvester)

Our climbers, Raj and Louis, relaxing on the First Terrace, partway up the standard Heinrich Harrer route on Carstensz Pyramid (photo by Terray Sylvester)

Our climbers, Bob and Chuck, preparing to fly to base camp.

Guide Terray Sylvester with our guests Bob and Chuck near the Arafura Sea.

With kids in Amamapare Village

In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:

– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:

• Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear our daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions.  Just say, “Alexa, play my flash briefing.“

– Instagram:

• @MadisonMtng
• @GarrettMadison1
• @terray_s