First Experience, Always Remembered

It was Saturday night on early November 2006 when I was first tried to hike a mountain. I was one of the candidate members of my senior high “Penggiat Alam” club or as we call it Pasmalima, stand for ‘Penggiat Alam SMAN 5 Bogor’. The school was finished in the afternoon, so we left after Maghrib. Well, I was so innocent about mountaineering at that time, I listened carefully to every word my seniors said to all of the candidates.

We started walking after midnight, under the light of the round full moon. My seniors, especially the alumni, were very entertaining, they joked all the way. I got my fear shooed away a lil bit. When we arrived in the chosen area, we built a bivouac from raincoats and raffia. We slept about an hour then we started the short one-day training. Yes, we were having one event of the training session to be able to get accepted in the club.

I was so happy doing the training. We camped near the crater of Mount Salak, called Kawah Ratu. From the crater, we could see the peaks of Mount Salak. Ya, Salak has some peaks, the most popular ones are Mount Salak 1 (2210 m asl), Mount Salak 2 (2180 m asl), and Mount Sumbul (1926 m asl).

We did some basic training in mountaineering, such as navigation, SAR simulation, first aid practice, and basic jungle survival. One of the practices was determining Azimuth and back-Azimuth to locate our location on the map. I took the Mount Salak 1 and Mount Salak 2 points to find my location on the map. It’s kinda useful when we lost our direction.

We went home in the afternoon, I was so glad to do the training. Well, if I can call it as a mountaineering, then it was my first mountaineering experience that I’ll never forget. My friends do feel the same way, I think. Whenever we talk about it, there’s always something to be remembered.