North side of Carstensz Pyramid from the air. Hall and Ball archive - Hedgehog House

Rising like a shark's fin out of the mist of a jungle far below, 16,023-foot Carstensz Pyramid is the highest peak in Australasia and one of the most remote of the "Seven Summits." It stands in the Jayawijaya Mountain Range, a limestone protrusion that spans the equatorial island of New Guinea from Irian Jaya (formerly Dutch New Guinea) in the west, through to Papua New Guinea in the east. The mountain was first climbed in the 1960s and has seen relatively few ascents since then.

This is a joint AAI/Adventure Consultants expedition. The trek to the basecamp at 4,200m starts after a plane ride to the island of Papua followed by another small plane ride to a remote village called Sugapa. It usually takes four days trekking to reach basecamp.

We will climb the mountain via its north face following a route that offers excellent climbing on coarse limestone while varying from easy scrambling to a few steeper pitches up to 5.8 which can be either climbed free or jumared. Additionally, while the razorback summit ridge is technically straightforward, it is very exposed in places. Expedition guides will fix ropes to provide good security on the ascent and to speed our decent before the typical afternoon precipitation reaches us. If time and weather permit, we will also climb Naga Pulu, the second highest summit of Australasia. This is a day-climb which includes a little snow and ice, a short section of easy rock climbing, and a finish on easy snow slopes to the summit.