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Unclimbed PNG peak?


IdratherbeclimbingM9

1-Jun-2006
1:31:15 PM

>I'd appreciate if you post what you find out.

Sampela taim lik lik bai kamap yume savvy olgeta samting bilong ples.

Neo-melanesian (pidgeon) translates as;

Soon we will know all about it!


Superstu

1-Jun-2006
8:37:17 PM

Introducing......The Finisterre Range...


Mike TS

5-Jun-2006
11:09:41 AM

Thanks
It doesn't look like a range of 4Ks
Nice palm tree


Superstu

6-Jun-2006
7:00:38 AM

Here are some pics of the jungles around here. Happy bushwhacking.


Superstu

7-Jun-2006
7:42:35 AM

On 5/06/2006 Mike TS wrote:
>Thanks
>It doesn't look like a range of 4Ks
>Nice palm tree

My cunning plan of course is to scare you off and keep the virgin peak for myself.


xj_0503

8-Jun-2006
11:00:57 PM

Oh, attractive picture, this is illuminates with the photographic camera?


xj_0503

8-Jun-2006
11:14:08 PM

Australia heard is the sunlight country, good is attractive, this is really?


IdratherbeclimbingM9

9-Jun-2006
2:40:32 PM

On 8/06/2006 xj_0503 wrote:
>Oh, attractive picture, this is illuminates with the photographic camera?
>Australia heard is the sunlight country, good is attractive, this is really?

One of our famous poets (Dorothea Mackellar), called Australia a 'sunburnt' country in her poem 'A Wide Brown Land'; ... but no, ... the pictures posted above by superstu are coastal scenery and a coastal stream near Madang in Papua New Guinea which is an island to the North of Australia.


xj_0503

9-Jun-2006
4:40:50 PM

Why but "sunburnt"? Australia's sunlight or has the fame very much us, always I all hoped can see the Australian sunlight most beautiful scenery, even if is illuminates!


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:40:24 AM

I'm back after my little trip up into the Finisterre ranges. Looks like the message thread got hijacked by a chinese troll! None-the-less here the pics I promised.


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:42:55 AM

Here is the landscape close up from a Cessna, and a typical PNG cliff. Inaccessible, vegetated, and obscured by clouds.


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:46:17 AM

This is not Teptep, but a similar airstrip. One of those "either you land, or you crash, no second shots"


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:49:45 AM

Spot what is wrong with this picture....

Sorry, I digress...


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:52:21 AM

Teptep is quite remote and they don't get many folks round these parts. The welcoming committee at the airstrip. Average age... five.


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:53:41 AM

Funky houses to keep people warm at night. OK, enough of the happy tourist snaps, where are the mountains you ask..?


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:57:02 AM

A nearby 3500m peak. Looks like a bushwalk.


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
10:59:44 AM

That's more like it.

Actually that's not your peak. Sorry I don't have any photos of THE peak in question. The problem is that the range is quite long and pointy, but no particular point stands out. That's why your 4000m peak doesn't have a name.


Superstu

22-Jul-2006
11:13:07 AM

We spent the night sitting around the fire chatting to locals trying to get some info about the big peak. Whose land was it on? Has it ever been climbed? Would you like to join us on a trip up there?

It wasn't easy to get straight answers. Oh yes we go up there all the time. Oh you mean the highest peak. Oh no nobody goes there, its too cold and there are no animals to hunt. Yes we will take you there. Oh no not there, we can't go there, its too cold. We'll provide ponchos and jumpers. Right on we'll go there. Lets spend a night up there and then come back. No, we want to climb the big peak, it will take days. Oh we can't go there. You'll have to ask the people in Nankina (the next valley along). But you'll bring us ponchos and jumpers anyway yes?

Anyhows, here is the low down if you want to climb your 4172m peak. Come in from Saidor by boat or fly into Teptep, Bonga, Gaps, or whatever air strip is open. Head up the Nankina valley (marked on my map, but no villages are marked). Find the biggest village up the valley and talk to the local bigman, hire some porters, give them ponchos and fleeces and a kmart tent (they get to keep them if they finish the trip), then head up for a couple of days into the mountains until you find your peak. Take your map and compass as the locals won't be able to tell you which is the highest (and they probably never thought about it, you can hardly see the top of anything and they rarely go that high because its cold and they have no shelter. ) The very highest peak may be a scramble, so some rope and basic mountaineering rack (i.e. your 3 favourite nuts).

It will most definitely rain on you. Your porters/guides will cut a path through the thicker jungles with machetes. Up high it becomes kuna grass, which should be easier, but the terrain will be treacherous because it will be steep and not held together with much.

I'll leave you with a picture of the walk down to the coast. Hideous, leech infested mud hell. We left teptep at 7am and walked 12 hrs nonstop (either going straight up or straight down) and collapsed in a village hut near the coast sometime after dark.

The next day we continued onto the coast, collapsed into the sea, made some friends and found ourselves a banana boat to take us back to madang later in the week.

The coast looked good ..... I'll be back in my kayak later in the year and will report if anybody is interested.


Phil Box

24-Jul-2006
7:48:43 AM

Superstu, thanks heaps mate.


IdratherbeclimbingM9

26-Jul-2006
8:18:56 PM

Excellent feedback superstu.
Even though I have not been to that specific location it still brings back memories aplenty.

BTW phil box, I still have not had feedback (yet) from my contacts that frequent Ok Tedi, re Hindenburg Wall beta. ... Will resurect this thread when I do.

There are 42 messages in this topic.