Hiking Mt Merapi via Selo - 2930 masl

"Hey Jard, can we climb Mt Merbabu and Mt. Merapi in three days and two nights?" a guy asked ne via private message on Facebook a few days back. I immediately answered, "YES!".

Me pictured on top of Mt. Merapi. 

For people who has a very tight schedule, you can actually compress these two mountains in just two days and one night. Both mountains can be climbed in a day if, of course you got the stamina to do it. AND.. you doing it via Selo. Hehe. But I highly recommend setting camp as it is quite peaceful beautiful sleeping under a sky full of stars. With luck, you'll get to see milky way! :)

After our descent from Mt Merbabu, we immediately headed to Mt. Merapi's basecamp on the same day. So it was breakfast at Mt. Merbabu, lunch at it's basecamp and then dinner at Mt. Merapi. Haha.

We started hiking a little over 4pm the same day and set camp at Pos I around 630pm. Hafiz, our guide, didn't want to continue to the next post as it was getting dark and he was deadbeat tired. There was not many camping spots at Pos I and we had to make do with a small area just under the big boulders, next to the roofed shelter. 

How's the trek? Here's a rough estimation.

It was nice to have the trek shown on our tickets. 

• Basecamp – New Selo (30 minutes) 
• It was a paved road upwards all the way. No views at all!
• New Selo – Pos I (2 hours)
• After passing the New Selo sign on top of a sturdy building that houses some eatery stalls, we'd be entering the vegetation forest. This is where we'll start seeing some dirt paths upwards. 
• Pos I – Pos II (1 hour) 
• Started trekking as early as 3 am. Didn't see a thing except that we climbed over a lot of rocks!.
• Pos II –  Pasar Bubrah (1 hour 30 minutes) 
• Rocky path.
• Pasar Bubrah – Puncak (1 hour)
• Get ready to climb over a somewhat sandy slope and rocks getting inside your shoes! 

Sadly we didn't get to take pictures of the night sky before dawn. But we did get to witness the sun rising in the horizon, before spilling its hazardous colors over us.

Good morning from Mt. Merapi! 

When the dark skies lit with glorious sun rays, we managed to cheer on our friends who were still climbing to the top.

Just love how the rays spill over us in this picture. Simply glorious. 

The trek reminded me so much of Mt. Mahameru's summit attack. It was quite similar with all these rocks to climb over. One step forward had us slide two steps backwards. Truly a battle with our wits!

And once everyone reached the top and finished feasting on the views above, we finally had this group photo to commemorate our summit achievement.

My favorite group photo so far! 

Mt. Merapi is still a very active volcano, so do check with the volcanic readings before planning a climb here. Here's a picture of Merapi's crater. It still spits out volcanic smoke and ashes.

The smoke coming from Merapi's crater. No it is not white clouds. 

We made our descend right after cooking breakfast and headed back to Jakarta. two of us will go back to Malaysia and the other three will continue to our THIRD mountain that week, Mt. Papandayan in Garut. :)