Jayawijaya Mountains

Puncak Jaya is a summit that is part of the Sudirman Range found in Papua Province, Indonesia. Puncak Jaya has an altitude of 4884 m and in the vicinity there Carstensz glacier, the only glacier in tropical Indonesia, which likely will soon vanish due to global warming.

This peak is the highest mountain in Indonesia Oceania region. Puncak Jaya is one of the world's top seven.

History
Discovery

The plateau around the summit originally was inhabited before any contact with Europeans, and the peak known as Nemangkawi in Amungkala. Puncak Jaya, formerly named Carstensz Pyramid after Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon called it when I first saw the glacier at the summit of the mountain on a sunny day in 1623.

Snowfield (glacier) Puncak Jaya managed to climb in early 1909 by a Dutch explorer, Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz with six Kenyah recruited from Apau Kayan in North Borneo. Lorentz National Park, which also includes the Carstensz Pyramid, established in 1919 following a report of this expedition.

Climbing History

In 1936, an expedition to Carstensz initiated by the Dutch, unable to establish with certainty which of the three is the highest peak, decided to try to climb each peak. Anton Colijn, Jean Jacques Dozy and Frits Julius Wissel reached Carstensz glacier field and East Peak Guns Pulu on 5 December. As glaciers melt, the height of the peak of the 4,862 Guns Pulu meters, but it has been estimated that in 1936 (when glaciers still covered peak of 13 square kilometers), Guns Pulu is the highest peak with an altitude of over 5,000 meters.

Afterwards Puncak Jaya never climbed until 1962, by an expedition led by the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, with three other members of the expedition, Robert Philip Temple, Russell Kippax, and Albert Huizenga. Philip Temple of New Zealand, previously led an expedition to the region and pave the access routes to the mountain.

In 1963, the peak was renamed Peak International, after it was changed to Puncak Jaya. Name of the Carstensz Pyramid is still used among mountaineers.

Glacier

Meanwhile, Puncak Jaya is still a little icy, there are several glaciers on the slopes, including the Carstensz Glacier, Glacier Northwall Firn West, and East Glacier Northwall Firn, recently rumored to vanish.

Glaciers in Puncak Trikora Maoke disappear altogether in the period between 1939 and 1962. Since 1970, evidence from satellite imagery shows Puncak Jaya glaciers have been shrinking rapidly. Meren Glacier melt between 1994 and 2000. An expedition led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson in 2010 found that the glaciers are disappearing at a rate of 7 meters in thickness per year and will disappear completely in 2015.