First Finisterre Range Trip Report,
June 1, 2012 - June 9, 2012.

THIS TRIP REPORT is UNDER CONSTRUCTION, Please be patient.

Short overview.

We travelled to Madang in Papua New Guinea and chartered a small boat to take us across the sea to the (roadless) village of Malalamei. From there, we walked to the very remote village of Teptep. Using Teptep as a starting point, we hiked through the jungle to reach the high ridge of the Finisterre mountains. Following the main divide, our plan was to reach the highest peak. Unfortunately, this turned out to be beyond our capabilities, due to several factors that constrained our trip. We ascended the highest peak on what may be called the Teptep part of the range. Here is an overview map of the route travelled.
See also the report from our second expedition in June/July 2014.

Our team consisted of:

        Petter E. Bjørstad, age 61, Norway
        Pål Jørgen Bjørstad, age 23, Norway

Before the Trip, Preparations.


This section is fairly detailed and may be skipped if you only would like to read about the actual trip. However, this part documents some of the difficulties and uncertain factors that I had to deal with and these factors ultimately had a very significant impact on the entire trip.

I had already for several years been intrigued by the fact that virtually nothing seemed to be known about the highest point in the Finisterre range. This is a mountain that ranks among the top 50 most prominent mountains on earth.
On March 8th. the University of Bergen hosts its annual dinner party for all professors in memory of Mr. Meltzer, a wealthy citizen of Bergen that donated a significant amount of money to the university when he died in 1943. As there is random seating, one often ends up talking to other faculty that one has never met before. This evening, I had the pleasure of talking to professor Olaf H. Smedal, a professor of social anthropology with special knowledge of natives from some of the Pacific islands of Indonesia. Since I knew nothing of this, I mentioned that I had some interest in a mountain located remotely in Papua, New Guinea.
The following weekend was rainy and best for indoor activities. To my surprise (and delight!) several emails from Olaf kept arriving, with contact information to people that knew more about Papua, but also with maps of the region of interest. These maps were not great, having 150 meter contour intervals and dating back about 40 years, but still they were the first maps that gave me some more concrete ideas about the area. Greatly inspired, I spent several more hours following leads that might provide clues as to how one could climb this mountain.

The first place I considered was Wantoat, information indicated that one could fly there from Lae, possibly also approach it with a 4WD from Lae. I found a report that at least one party had walked from another place called Teptep, to Wantoat. This led to the discovery of a guest house in Teptep and a link to the Madang Tourist and Cultural office. I fired off some emails and after a few days, a quite informative reply from Mr. Jonathan Bluhdorn arrived.
Jonathan had just touched base with the chief of Tapmangdom, Dopeke Dakop, also locally responsible for the guest house in Teptep.
Big question: Would Dopeke know a route to the very highest mountain in Finisterre and if so, how long was this hike. Furthermore, would he be able to serve as a guide on a trip to this summit? Communication by email was not exactly overnight, but after some time a positive and quite optimistic reply came in. Here is an excerpt from the information provided by Dopeke (via Jonathan):

Dopeke came to visit yesterday. Dopeke understands English ok, but he needs time to think and reply, and he often reverts to Tok Pisin (the trade language here). He said one can walk up and it is not too difficult and doesn't require special gear like ropes etc. He doesn't know how to read the map so he can't comment on following the contours and the best route. He does't know gradients but he told me 'it is steep'.

He says the top of the mountain is rocky and sometimes snowy. The indigenous name for the peak is 'Tuktuai' which means 'Stone mountain'. There is a large grassy section (Kunai grass) further down. Further down you end up in a huge forest that surrounds the peak. It is called 'Suawamak' which means 'to put a leaf on your shin' (I don't understand what this means). They use the forest for hunting, and have lots of trails through it. I think the western name for Tuktuai is 'Mt Finisterre', but I'm not sure.

He told us that he doesn't think any white person has been to Tuktuai before! I'm not sure how accurate this is, but if it is then it will be quite an achievement for you. It is said that from the very top on a clear day you can look down at Madang town on one side and the Ramu valley on the other. He tells me some researchers come and go into Suawamak while researching tree kangaroos, but nobody to climb to Tuktuai.

He tells me that his tribe and clan are landowners of a large part of Suawamak, and that Tuktuai is a shared area with other tribes too. He assured me that as a landowner that people from Teptep Station and his village (Tapmangdom) are able to enter the area and will not be forced out by other tribes. Land ownership is quite important in Papua New Guinea and this is a big issue. If you can't find the right land owner often you can't access certain tribal lands, and if you go alone into an area (or with the wrong land owner) you might be confronted unpleasantly by the actual landowners. I'll do my best to answer questions about the exact route, but it'll be challenging to get a suitable answer from Dopeke. I'm not aware of anyone who's done this climb before. You'll be pioneering the route for other climbers. It will be very adventurous and you'll encounter some difficulties, I'm sure of it.

Jonathan talked more with chief Dopeke, in order to verify that the peak we wanted was indeed the peak he also had in mind. This was slightly complicated since Dopeke did not understand a map, ie. he was unable to make the connection between an "abstract map" and the real terrain. He still verified that the peak was located in the correct direction, that it was indeed the highest, that it sometimes could have snow etc. All this made sense. He could also tell that the Teptep people legally could access the peak, but that it also belonged to other tribes. The tribes in PNG are quite observant on what land belongs to what tribe. To walk on land that you are unauthorized to visit could carry very unpleasant consequences.
My (old) map showed a significant mountain close to Teptep, in order to check that Dopeke did not think of this, I asked Jonathan to ask him its name.

Dopeke says that the mountain very close to Teptep is named Kalong. He said it would be a three hour climb.

This was reassuring, in fact, I later learned that our trail from Teptep to the coast traverses this mountain quite near its very top.
I still wrote back to Jonathan:

"It is extremely important for me that we are in full agreement about WHERE the highest point is located and that INDEED Dopeke understands where this is. This may seem a bit silly and I respectfully give all my apologies for this concern. It has happened elsewhere that a major misunderstanding about WHICH mountain subsequently cause big problems. Once I am at Teptep, there is little that might be done if a major misunderstanding should arise."

Jonathan replied:

"I understand your concerns about finding the right mountain. It can happen here, that a Papua New Guinean will promise that they can do it because they are saving face. It is impolite to say no here and often somebody says yes to questions just because it is polite. Dopeke says he understands and that he knows which one is the largest mountain and that he knows how to get there and that he is allowed to get there. But he could be saving face. Short of going there and doing it myself first, there is not much I can do to verify this. Everyone here in the tourism bureau thinks Dopeke is trustworthy. I have showed him the map and point to the contour lines and the highest mountain, and he nods. He admits that he cannot read the map and that he just knows which one is biggest and how to get there because he has been there before and it is his clan's land. However, I cannot be absolutely sure unless I go myself. I am sorry that I cannot provide the certainty that you need for this. But my impression is that he dependable. I will attempt to speak to his younger brother and see if he is of the same opinion as Dopeke."

I also asked to verify what would be needed wrt. making food. I planned to take dyhydrated mountain food (REAL Drytech) from Norway. This needs boiling water and in Africa, our native guide/porter had always been able to provide this. Jonathan replied promptly:

"He is a bushman, so he can start a fire very easily when needed for cooking food & boiling water for your dried food."

With all this information, it seemed that a quick trip to Papua after my already scheduled trip to Nanjing, China would be possible. The airline MAF provided their price for me using a charter Cessna (a plane that could carry up to 4 people) to fly round trip from Lae or Madang to Teptep. My travel agent VIA informed me that the connections to Lae was much better than to Madang. I needed to be back in Bergen on June 10 at the latest, but this seemed like adequate time. VIA booked me three roundtrip tickets for each of us: 1) A roundtrip from Norway to Shanghai with return from Beijing, this would serve the business part of my trip. 2) A roundtrip from Shanghai to Brisbane, Australia with return to Beijing, and 3) A roundtrip ticket from Brisbane to Lae in Papua. The last ticket is by far the shortest flight, but unfortuneately, still the most expensive of the three tickets.

The first complication that came up, was new information that MAF had stopped flying from Lae and that a charter based from Lae therefore would be very expensive. VIA subsequently changed my ticket from Lae to Madang, a fee of approximately NOK 2000. was still better than paying MAF for a charter from Lae.
The next, totally unexpected complication, came from MAF. I decided to call their operational headquarter located in Mount Hagen, PNG, in order to finalize the details regarding the charter. At this point, they suddenly reversed and said that they would not and could not provide me the necessary charter flights to Teptep. I made a few attempts to get them to change their position, or at least make them explain the reason, but with no luck. They did refer me to some other (obscure?) airline, but I quickly decided that this was not an option. Dopeke had just recently been flying to Madang with MAF and at least a couple of parties had visited Teptep by way of MAF in the recent past. The plan had been to fly to Teptep on June 1., then returning from Teptep on June 6 or June 7, giving us 6 full days for the climb with a base in Teptep.
A new plan without the charter flights was quickly developed. Charter a boat and travel to Malalamai, then walk to Teptep. The return trip would follow the same route. The critical element here was time. This land based travel would take 3 full days out of our scheduled time in Teptep, leaving us with a maximmum of 3 days for the actual climb. Still, it was way too late to change the trip now, with all airline tickets purchased. The direct distance from Teptep to the peak was 20 kilometer and Dopeke claimed with strength that one certainly could do this in two days!

The next, big complication turned out to be related to our flight tickets. The Chinese embassy in Oslo flatly refused to provide a visa that would allow us to return via China (Beijing). Furthermore, the company Visumservice AS, that handled the practicalities for me, assured me that nobody from Norway had been able to obtain a visa that authorized 2 entries, since their new (restrictive) rules had been put in place last February. They claimed (with force) that VIA should never have issued these tickets. To make things more confused, VIA claimed that for such a transit return flight (involving a single night in Beijing near the airport), no visa should be required. However, they could not get the airlines to confirm this, neither would they guarantee it themselves. The end of this matter was that VIA bought a completely new return ticket from Brisbane to Norway and charged me another NOK 25.000 on top of all the tickets that had already been charging. Not good! Do not consider using this agency.

I was fortunate to be able to borrow an Irridium satelite phone from the local mountaineering association, Bergen Turlag, chapter of our national DNT organization. I realized that it would be important to have a reliable point of contact, a liason, in Madang during our trip. The obvious person for this role would have to be Jonathan until I heard that his period as a volunter worker would end just a few days before our arrival. This was certainly unfortunate, however he assured me that the other staff at the tourist office were well informed and could take care of this matter.
Upon the recommendation of Jonathan, I booked the first and last night in Madang with the Madang resort. Mainly because their location would be most convenient when departing by boat for the Raicoast. A final matter came up concerning life jackets for the boat trip. Sometimes these small boats would not make it and Jonathan could tell that nobody then survived. He suggested renting life jackets from the resort, but they were unwilling to do this. Finally, we just decided to bring two life jackets from Norway, not a big deal in the overall picture.
A final note should be made on the general safety of Papua. It became clear that its reputation was far from perfect. In Lae, people were robbed on the street in mid-day. The supreme court just ruled that the current prime minister had taken power in an illegal way. The goverment declared a state of emergency authorizing the use of military forces to protect government buildings. A province north of Madang declared its independence from Papua and somebody made an attempt to kill the leader of the provincial government of Madang (Mr. Ben Lange) on a sunday night shortly before our arrival. Papua had general elections scheduled for later in June and general uprisings could not be ruled out.
This could certainly scare a tourist from Europe, however, I thought that as long as I had my local agreements with the boat owner and with chief Dopeke, then a low profile would most likely mean that we would not notice any of these troubles. This turned out to be a correct assesment.

On May 9th. I got a pretty encouraging message from Jonathan:

I now think Dopeke has the right mountain in his mind - the HP of the Finisterre Ranges. Today Dopeke, Dean and I studied the map of Raicoast together. We showed him that the village of Nakop is closer to the mountain than Teptep station is. Dopeke said that he knows this and that the trail from Teptep to the mountain has a branch that goes to Nakop village, which is quite close to the top of the mountain. I see this as evidence that he knows exactly where it is.

So I then confronted him about the distance - how could he suggest that a 40km trek up the mountain and back to Teptep could be done in a day. He said that it was indeed possible for a local man to do this - leaving well before the sun comes up and arriving back well after the sun goes down. He agrees that it is a longer way to the mountain than it is to Gaptamon. He doesn't think that you'll be able to get to the top of the mountain and back in one day, and expects that you'll sleep in the bush that night. He and what ever porters you hire will sleep outside - they will whip up some sort of shelter for themselves.

Given all this, I was fully realistic about our chances to succeed. Several unforeseen complications had already altered my plan substantially, reducing the time available for the actual climb. The fact that Dopeke claimed that the climb could be done in two days could go both ways; either he still had the wrong mountain or he knew in fact, a pretty direct and efficient route that would lead us to the mountain. I figured that this would be a great trip regardless of outcome and that I surely would learn first hand, how to approach this slightly mysterious mountain.

Day 0, May 31th..  -  Travel to and arrival in Madang, Papua New Guinea.


We travelled from the China-Norway-Sweden workshop on computational mathematics in Nanjing, China. From there, we took the high speed train (more than 300 km/h) to Shanghai and flew to Brisbane in Australia. After a quick connect, we were on our way to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, PNG for short. Here, we had about 1.5 hours to connect with the local domestic flight to Madang. This turned out to be marginal. The first priority on Papua soil would be to get sufficient local currency. We needed a lot, since all our subsequent services would have to be paid in cash. I had been informed that we would find an ATM before immigration, this turned out to be correct. I started by getting 1000 Kina on one card, then withdrew another 1000 Kina on a second card. Finally, Pål Jørgen should get 1000 Kina. At this point the machine sort of broke. It gave him a receipt of 400 Kina, but produced none. Hopefully, nothing was actually charged. Next in order was PNG visa, this can be bought on arrival. We went to the window for buying entry visa. This was quick, basically they just collect 100 Kina (about 50 US dollars) from each, then onwards to immigration. Unfortunately, immigration was worse than slow. The two other lines (PNG citizens and travellers with prearranged visa) were empty, but the immigration officers had no intention to help the guy that served our long line. We finally got served with only about 5 more minutes before our domestic flight.
We picked up our two heavy bags in order to get them rechecked. The lady claimed that the flight had closed and that we better stay overnight in Port Moresby. I argued and she called around, finally telling me that the flight had seats, but could not take any more weight. The whole story seemed confused and sshe finally agreed to check our bags.
We rushed following signs saying departures. There we ran into more officials, they informed us that we had gone wrong, this was international departures, we were supposed to get to an entirely separate building, the domestic terminal. For such a tiny airport to have two terminals did never occur to me. Anyway, they already stamped my passport as "departed" before the mistake was discovered. We ran down the street and into the domestic building only to find that our flight was 40 minutes late and that it had not even started boarding. Puh!
Our one hour flight to Madang proceeded without any further incidents, we were met by the Madang resort shuttle at the airport and driven to the site, a nicely developed property on a small, local penisula with scattered buildings for accommodation. Here we also met Kazuki, a Japanese volunter worker from the Tourist office. He showed us around town in order for us to complete our last local preparations. More cash from the local ATM, the purchase of tea, biscuits and candy as gifts to local villages and the purchase of about 40 buai nuts, a very popular thing to chew, that we should give away to people we wanted a good relationship with. A good T-bone steak in the restaurant concluded a long and somewhat stressful day of travel.

Day 1, June 1st.  -  We cross to the Raicoast and hike to Gaptamon.


We had agreed to meet at the boat by 0800. The boat would come to a boat landing area located just minutes from our hotel. It soon began to rain, not as in Norway - this was tropical rain by the buckets! Several dingy boats were arriving, pretty overloaded and full of umbrellas. We were told that Dopeke was in town buying last supplies and that

Day 2, June 2nd.  -  We hike to Teptep.


We got up pretty early and soon were ready to walk.

Day 3, June 3rd.  -  We climb to the Finisterre mountains.


We started out in the early morning with Dopeke and one porter. Pål Jørgen and I also carried reasonably heavy backpacks. Initially, we followed a trail that sort of gained elevation while traversing right. We crossed a couple of smaller creeks and walked by a few huts that were located a bit away from the main Teptep village. xxxx We finally arrived at a location from where we could see directly across to the main chain of high peaks including what had to be the Finisterre HP. The highest peak on this side of the main pass was up to our left. The highest peak across was partially obscured by drifting clouds. I pointed to it and told Dopeke that this was indeed our goal and the peak we wanted to climb. It seemed too far away and the deep col that separated us from our target was certainly also a potential problem. Dopeke shook his head and said that that peak could not possibly be our goal. That peak was located in Nankina land - completely off-limits to Teptep people. He continued to tell us that the Nankina people were unfriendly and that we should never go there. The peak that he wanted to guide us to was pretty near, clearly the peak off to our left side - the highest peak in Teptep land.
Obviously, what had been a real danger all along, now proved true. Dopeke had never understood what peak we wanted to climb.

Day 4, June 4th.  -  We descend to Teptep.



Day 5, June 5th.  -  We begin our trek to the coast.



Day 6, June 6th.  -  We trek to the coast.



Day 7, June 7th.  -  We cross the sea back to Madang.



Day 8, June 8th.  -  We travel to Australia.


Day 9, June 9th.  -  We travel to home to Norway.


This story continues in 2014 with our second expedition to The Finisterre Range.

Credits and Critisisms::

Credits:
Professor Olaf H. Smedal, University of Bergen:
This trip came about as a result of the traditional University of Bergen Meltzer dinner on March 8th. 2012. The seating is random and I got seated next to professor Olaf H. Smedal. He is professor of Social Anthropology with extensive knowledge of native life on Indonesian islands, close enough to provide pointers that got me started. In fact, the following weekend I received some crude topo maps of the area as well as some references to scientists that knew the specific area better than him. Bergen had indoor weather (rain) this weekend and I decided to look into a possible expedition at least a bit more seriously than previously.
Mr. Jonathan Bluhdorn:
I subsequently came in contact with Jonathan Bluhdorn, an Australian volunter worker with the Madang Visitors & Cultural Bureau. He had already touched base with Chief Dopeke Dakop from the Tapmangdom village located in Teptep, where he had built a guesthouse for possible tourism. Jonathan did invaluable research and checked out numerous options that went well beyond what I could have expected. Warm thanks are due for all the extra work he put in to help make this trip successful.

Critisism:
The Chinese Embassy in Oslo:
The Chinese embassy that refused to grant us a visa allowing our return flight to go via Beijing. This flight had already been purchased on the advice of the VIA travel agent, Trondheim office. This very unreasonable Chinese behavior is related to the award of the Nobel Peace Price to a Chinese dissident in 2010. Such a reaction, to damage the fruitful cooperation between Chinese and Norwegian mathematicians, is of course only extremely unfortunate and childish.
The VIA travel agency:
Trondheim office, that sold me airline tickets that (possibly) could not be used. This resulted in an extra, personal loss of about NOK 25.000. According to the Visa support company Visumservice AS, extremely unprofesionally done, as no multiple entry visa had been granted by the Chinese since they changed their policy in February 2012. The purpose of using a travel agent should be to let experts help make good travel plans that can indeed be carried out. It is very likely that the tickets could have been used, since the return flight was only a transit travel, however, VIA travel was unable to check this out with the relevant airlines. The travel agent did not feel any responsibility for the resulting financial consequences. To run a service business and never accept responsibility is fundamentally flawed. I will strongly discourage all readers from using this agency.
MAF - Missionary Aviation Fellows:
This (US based) airline has its Papua headquarter in Mount Hagen. They had carried out charter flights to Teptep in the past. The Madang Tourist and Cultural office had no reason to believe that they would suddenly change their policy. A MAF representative provided Jonathan with complete quotes for flying out of Lae as well as Madang. Based on their quotes, I originally booked my flight to Lae. They subsequently informed that they had closed down their Lae flights, causing yet another financial loss related to a change of tickets from Lae to Madang.
Much more seriously, when all flight plans were fixed, they suddenly refused to carry out the charter flights at all! Providing quotes and then turn around is not the kind of behavior one expects from anyone, perhaps in particular not from a church oriented organization.
This expedition was planned with a full week stay in Teptep, in order to allow for an exploratory hike as well as a full, multi-day summit attempt.
With this late change, we were forced to travel by sea and on foot from the Rai-coast, this took 4 full days away from our time in the high mountains. With all airline tickets booked, we could do little, but hoping that the climb could be carried out in at most 3 days without any prior exploration. Obviously, this unexpected event seriously reduced our chances of success.

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