# Climbing Puncak Jaya

To climb Indonesia's [Puncak Jaya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puncak_Jaya#Climbing) (4,870m), you fly in a small aircraft to a village near the peak, then walk 5 days through "very dense jungle" with "regular rainfall" to reach the base of the peak. Reaching the summit requires another day, at which point, you're: (a) about 500km from the equator; (b) surrounded by glaciers (!); and (c) 4km from [Grasberg Mine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine), one of the largest open pit mines in the world ([map](https://goo.gl/maps/8KJ10)) (!!).

I suppose the workers get in and out of the mine via helicopter but there must also be some sort of road--? Climbing mountains isn't supposed to be easy, but this does remind me of the Goon Show: "[For a hundred miles Bloodnok and his party hacked their way through the jungle that ran alongside the arterial road](http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s08e14_the_african_incident)."