And just like that! We are happy to report the summit success of our entire Carstensz Pyramid team on the morning of June 16. After crawling out of their sleeping bags, gearing up, and leaving their tent walls, clear and starry skies shined overhead. Climbers scarfed down some food and coffee to fuel up for the climb ahead, before shouldering their packs and starting up the route. We enjoyed excellent climbing and conditions through the night and into the morning, making great time while climbing higher up the mountain. There were some of the best views and climbing conditions we’ve ever experienced on Carstensz, with views as far as the eye can see and the mountain entirely to ourselves; not another soul was up there! The team celebrated together on the summit before descending back down to camp, safe and sound. What a day, and what an expedition it’s been so far! Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in from the Yellow Valley Base Camp after successfully topping out on Oceania’s highest peak, Carstensz Pyramid:
Hello! This is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Carstensz Pyramid (4884m/16,024ft) Expedition. Today’s June 16th.
This morning, we left base camp (4285m/14,050ft) under perfectly clear, starry skies at about 5 a.m. By four hours later, the entire team was standing on the summit of Carstensz Pyramid, the highest point in Oceania, and one of the ‘seven summits!’ We had a really nice climb. The weather was perfect. We had perfectly clear skies as the sun rose over the Sudirman Range, which is just a really beautiful, kind of magnificent range with lots of exposed limestone, craggy peaks. And as we gained the summit ridge, we had clear skies looking down to the south as well, toward the Arafura Sea. I felt like if we’d been able to see just a little bit farther, we would have caught a glimpse of Australia! Really nice weather for Carstensz Pyramid.
Yeah, the clear skies and good weather continued all the way to the summit and back down. We are all back in base camp now and relaxing in t-shirts and shorts in the sunshine, and preparing for our flight back to Timika (31m/103ft).
All in all this expedition has gone really well so far! We arrived in Timika on schedule, flew to the mountain on schedule, summited on the day we planned to, according to our itinerary, the next day, and hopefully we’ll fly out of base camp later today or tomorrow. So, yeah, really special expedition here in the New Guinea Highlands.
This was a custom itinerary. So we are climbing outside of the usual seasons on Carstensz Pyramid, which means that we have the mountain all to ourselves. There’s no one else in base camp, just our little team, and we were the only ones on the mountain. Felt very peaceful, really special.
So yeah, all good here in the tropics in Papua. And we’ll be in touch tomorrow.
Before leaving camp on the summit push.
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.“
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