Where no one has gone before
A Mount Giluwe trek into the unknown
First you slither upwards on muddy tracks in a 4WD. Then you start walking through bush that you have to machete aside, and lurch across swampy dips in the landscape. Dense forest creates a Ninja
Warrior obstacle course of ferns, dangling lianas and boulder-strewn rivers. As you get higher, the forest fades. This isn’t the Papua New Guinea of coconut trees and pretty birds of paradise you might imagine. At times, it could be the Scottish Highlands, damp and scrubby. Humans are ants in this landscape. At times, there are heart-banging scrambles up ridges. Sharp peaks of split rock loom.
This is just the hike to the top of Mount Giluwe, 4367 metres above sea level, in PNG’s Southern Highlands. It’s the country’s second-highest peak and the loftiest volcanic peak in Australasia, making it one of seven volcanoes worldwide that serious hikers want to summit. But imagine, after all that, arriving at the top, looking down the other side and thinking, let’s do that, let’s walk where no outsiders have been recorded walking before, into silent gullies and through thick bamboo forest where an hour’s effort gets you 500 metres. And you hope your efforts get you back to civilisation, eventually.
“When we finally hit a small village, locals couldn’t believe their eyes. They’d never seen people come from that side of the mountain,” says Peter Miller. “And when we told them where we’d started, they literally gasped in disbelief.”
Miller is the managing director of hiking company No Roads Expeditions. Last year, he led 25 PNG nationals and six Australians on a seven-day trek that took them across Mount Giluwe.
Explorer brothers Mick and Dan Leahy ‘discovered’ the mountain in 1933, but since then it has been summited far less than Mount Wilhelm (PNG’s highest mountain). Once past road’s end, there are no signposts, no tracks, no signs of human life. There are no documented accounts of anyone taking a different way down the massif.
Getting to Mount Giluwe’s summit is a struggle. The mountain was formed by volcanic eruptions and then covered by an icecap and has typical glacial U-shaped valleys, rubble-strewn moraines and high plateaux.
The trek starts in lower montane rainforest notable for pandanus, ferns, orchids, begonias and bamboo. Tangled roots slow progress. Higher up, trees are stunted and hang with moss.
At around 3000 metres, the forest peters out, replaced by alpine grassland dotted with lakes and bogs. The grasslands are exposed to the elements. Water is plentiful, but there’s no fuel for fires. It’s an eroded, weather-beaten landscape subject to sudden winds, rains and occasionally snow. Camp overnight and you’ll see light arrive in purple blankets of clouds as if it’s the dawn of time. Fog usually clears by early morning. The sun casts an orange glow onto the hilltops and moves bands of light across the landscape.
“Though not a technical trek and requiring only reasonable fitness, this is an expedition not to be underestimated,” says Miller. “You can burn in the sun, or alternatively get hypothermia from a combination of wet clothes, wind, hunger and fatigue.”
The trailblazing expedition began at 2600 metres at Melki village, with the summit reached over several days as plunging valley views and jagged peaks became ever more extraordinary. The last few hundred metres were a scramble, often over wet rocks, with intimidating drops just off the route. A surveyor’s pole marks Mount Giluwe’s summit.
“Getting that far was no problem, it had been done before – maybe 10 people a year do it – but the subsequent traverse was uncharted territory. The local men had never known anyone go there, and were nervous.”
The team initially employed experienced trekkers from Mount Hagen and the Kokoda Trail but, as they started out, local Giluwe men insisted on coming too. No one knew anything about where they were going, however. The team had, the day before, briefly surveyed the mountain’s western flank from the summit, and carried a GPS, but it was slow, with scouts sent forward to seek out the best route over spurs, and around or through gullies. It was the climb up, but in reverse, grassland giving way to forest. The tangled vegetation had to be lopped with machetes.
The tinkling of a stream that they never actually set eyes on became a rough audio guide. “If we could hear this stream and we were descending, we knew we were heading in the right direction,” explains Miller. “But with men from three different parts of PNG wanting to lead the way, we inevitably lost both the stream and ourselves.”
Finally, at dusk on the seventh day, the footsore, sweat-soaked band of adventurers stumbled across a hunting trail and out of the forest, where they set up their last camp before the next day’s luxuries of showers, square meals and a soft sleep. There was no fanfare, no celebration, no fireworks or fuss; only the jaw- dropped surprise of local villagers, and a feeling of accomplishment.
“It’s not often that you come across a mountain that has never been climbed or traversed,” says a gleeful Miller. “I just love this stuff!”
The traverse was uncharted territory. The local men had never known anyone go there.
No rest for the weary, however. No Roads Expeditions is now determined to launch expeditions that will eventually climb every 4000-metre peak in PNG. Next up is Mount Kabangama, with no records showing it has ever been summited, let alone traversed.
Little information exists at about it at all.
Why do it? Just because it’s there, as early Everest explorer George Mallory once famously remarked.
For the challenge, the thrill of human endeavour, the views. Although not, perhaps, for the bamboo forests.
The next Mount Giluwe traverse is scheduled to depart on July 9 as planned, despite recent earthquakes in the region. Other expeditions aim to climb further peaks, including a trailblazing Mount Kabangama traverse departing on August 13. See noroads.com.au.