Qualla: Puncak Trikora

Puncak Trikora: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lencer, Public domain. The Dani who farmed the sweet-potato terraces around Lake Habbema called the mountain Ettiakup. They had watched its glaciers shine in the thin highland sun for as long as anyone could remember. In 1909, a Dutch expedition led by the diplomat Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz climbed high enough to see the peak up close and renamed it Wilhelmina, after their queen. In 1963, Indonesia took control of western New Guinea and renamed it again - Puncak Trikora, after the speech Sukarno had given two years earlier demanding exactly that takeover. Sometime between those two renamings, the ice itself disappeared.

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Image: Lencer | Public domain

Puncak Trikora: Three Names, One Mountain

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist., Public domain. Puncak Trikora rises to 4,730 meters - or 4,750, depending on the survey - in the eastern Sudirman Range of the Maoke Mountains. It sits behind Puncak Jaya (4,884 m), making it either the second or third highest summit on the island of New Guinea, depending on whether more recent...

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Image: Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist. | Public domain

Puncak Trikora: The Ice That Was

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist., Public domain. At the start of the 20th century, all of New Guinea's highest peaks carried ice. Puncak Jaya, Puncak Mandala, Ngga Pilimsit, and Puncak Trikora all sat beneath equatorial glaciers - one of the strangest geographical phenomena on Earth. When the Second South New Guinea Expedition ...

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Image: Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist. | Public domain

Puncak Trikora: The Geology Under the Ice

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist., Public domain. The mountain itself is older than the glaciers that briefly crowned it, and older still than any name it has carried. The central range of New Guinea was lifted in the late Miocene by an oblique collision between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates - a slow, grinding encou...

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Image: Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist. | Public domain

Puncak Trikora: What the Dutch Lost on the Way Up

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alphons Franssen Herderschee (1872–1932), Public domain. The Noord River, navigable deep into the lowlands, made Trikora more approachable than the other snow peaks of Dutch New Guinea. In July 1907, the first Dutch expedition established Camp Alkmaar where the river stopped being navigable; they failed to penetrate the high range. The...

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Image: Alphons Franssen Herderschee (1872–1932) | Public domain

Puncak Trikora: Climbers' Mountain, Claimants' Flag

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist., Public domain. Today Trikora draws a small number of expedition mountaineers each year, usually as part of "Seven Second Summits" attempts for those chasing the second-highest peaks on each continent. Access runs from Wamena up through the Baliem Valley, past Lake Habbema, along the same basic ...

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Image: Paul François Hubrecht (1880-1929), Dutch geologist. | Public domain