Puncak Jaya Guide | Papua | Indonesia | History

Puncak Jaya Guide | Papua | Indonesia | History

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Puncak Jaya
Puncak Jaya
Location in Indonesia

Puncak Jaya (pronounced [ˈpʊntʃak ˈdʒaja]), sometimes called Mount Carstensz or the Carstensz Pyramid, is a mountain in the Sudirman Range, the western central highlands of Papua province, Indonesia. Other names include Carstensz Toppen and Gunung Sukarno.[2]

It is the highest mountain in Indonesia, the highest on the island of New Guinea (which comprises the Indonesian Papua provinces plus Papua New Guinea), the highest on the Australia-New Guinea continent and the highest in Oceania. It is also the highest point between the Himalayas and the Andes and the highest island peak in the world.
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History

Puncak Jaya was originally called 'Carstensz Pyramid', after Dutch explorer Jan Carstensz who first sighted the glaciers on the peak of the mountain on a rare clear day in 1623 (Carstensz was ridiculed in Europe when he said he had seen snow near the equator).[citation needed] This name is still used among mountaineers.[citation needed] Although the snowfield of Puncak Jaya was reached as early as 1909 by a Dutch explorer, Hendrik Albert Lorentz with six of his indigenous Dayak Kenyah porters recruited from the Apo Kayan in Borneo[3], the peak was not climbed until 1962, by an expedition led by the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer (of Seven Years in Tibet fame) with three friends — Temple, Kippax and Huizenga.

When Indonesia took control of the province in the 1960s, the peak was renamed 'Puntjak Soekarno' (Simplified Indonesian: Puncak Sukarno) or Sukarno Peak, after the first President of Indonesia, later this was changed to Puncak Jaya. Puncak means peak or mountain and Jaya means 'victory', 'victorious' or 'glorious').