This trip differed from our prior expedition in that we still had MERPs (multi-entry visas) and thus only needed to spend one day in Jakarta before heading to Sulawesi. We used our one night in Jakarta to grab some delicious sate from a street vendor, much to Jeff’s delight (Hi, I’m JEEEF!!!! I’m PUMPED for some sate!!!!). With Luke Bloch and Jeff Frederick.
Pre-expedition shopping in Makassar. We bring a combination of packaged and fresh food from a local pasar to our field camp. With Monique Winterhoff, Heru Handika, Kevin Rowe, Molly Watchorn, and Luke Bloch.
Prior to reaching the mountain, we had a day to kill in Malino for food shopping. Upon arriving in Malino, we had a nice meal in the Cafe Pinus (pronounced pee-nus). Get your mind out of the gutter – there is large pine tree plantation nearby! With Newt Rockney, Susan Perkins, Luke Bloch, and Rauri
“what the hell is wrong with you” Bowie
Our destination, Gunung Bawakaraeng (Mt. Bawakaraeng), in all its glory. A pair of field camps on this mountain (at 1700 and 2400 m elevation) would be our home for 23 days.
Of course, before you can climb the mountain, you must check in with local people including the Kepala Desa and Kepala Dusun. Thankfully, we were able to resuscitate Kevin so that he could continue on the trip. Devious Luke lurks behind me..
Our giant pile of gear is unloaded at Dusun Gunung Perak – the jump off point for our short hike up the mountain.
Susan Perkins and Rauri Bowie on the beautiful stream immediately adjacent to our camp at 1715 m elevation.
Setting up tents on day 1 of 23 at our 1715 m campsite.
Every tent needed a tarp in this mossy forest!
Our camp was on a plateau adjacent to a 200+ m cliff. This was the view from the cliff-edge..
We had a sight-line all the way to Teluk Bone (Bone Bay) from our cliff-side camp. This allowed Susan Perkins to make a steady stream of Facebook postings!
This is a fairly typical field camp with home-made tables. A lot of time spent sitting on those super comfy sapling-trunk benches..
This was the plush workspace of ‘Team Herp’
‘Team Bird’ worked here..
‘Team Bug’ (really just Newt Rockney with some help from Susan Perkins) stacked their equipment here — and then mostly worked on the ground next to the table for some odd reason..
Sarino (the unofficial rajah of Team Bug) preferred his cozy tent for arthropod prep!
Winkler traps up and running!
This was the work space of ‘Team Tikus’ (the rat team). Perhaps a misnomer since they also collected plenty of cicerut (shrews) and the occasional tupai (squirrel).
Hard at work (except yours truly)..
Base camp has to have a kitchen, of course. Ours received an ‘A’ rating from the local health department..
It turns out that you really need to spread your veggies out like so if you don’t want them to rot.
This is the forest at ~1750 meters elevation. Already quite mossy.
More forest at ~1750 m. I had never seen more rotan palm (the plant in the foreground) than in this forest (..until we went to Gunung Torompupu the following year). Rotan is my least favorite plant in SE Asia – each of those branches has a long “whip” with hundreds of super sharp recurved thorns that hook into your skin, clothes, you name it. After being snagged by the arms, legs, nose, ears, eyelids, etc., the inevitable result is a linearly-arranged series of infected sores.
More mossy forest at ~1800 meters elevation..
The high elevation herpetofauna is not rich in species. However, those that are present tend to be high elevation endemics. This is evidently the fourth specimen ever collected of Hebius sarasinorum – we eventually collected number five as well.
Jeff Frederick with Hebius sarasinorum. Susan Perkins mans the camera.
Even ornithologists get a kick out of handling snakes! Here Rauri Bowie takes a turn with our first Hebius sarasinorum.
Calamaria curta – one of five species of Calamaria that we collected on Gunung Bawakaraeng.
This is a male Limnonectes arathooni guarding his egg clutch in a small depression on a nearly vertical mud bank about 1.5 meters above a stream. Male arathooni congregate on near-vertical mud banks for reproduction.
This is a large male Limnonectes microtympanum. They don’t call them fanged frogs for nothing! Of course, those aren’t teeth but rather enlarged bony odontoid processes on the lower jaw.
We think Limnonectes males use their enlarged fang-like odontoid processes for fighting, but they probably also use them when capturing large prey – note the feet of the tree frog, Polypedates iskandari, projecting from the mouth of this large male Limnonectes microtympanum.
We swab every frog for chytrid fungus. Here Jeff Frederick demonstrates his technique with a Limnonectes microtympanum.
This cool Rhacophorus “flying frog” is either the undescribed “species pointy” that we have previously collected on Sulawesi’s Central Core or a separate undescribed species. Either way, this awesome frog is new to science.
A Spot-tailed Sparrowhawk in the capable hands of Pak Irham. This species and the obviously closely related Chinese Sparrowhawk were both (surprisingly) present at this site.
Our arrival at high camp after a long hike in an icy cold rain was considered a low point of the trip by some members of the team. Of course, Monique would still be smiling even she had just lost an appendage. Monique and Rauri are a study in contrasts!
Yep, everyone was pretty cold when we arrived at our 2400 meter ‘high camp’..
We had high hopes that our 2400 meter ‘high camp’ would be pre-staged and ready to move into when we arrived. The site (shown here) wasn’t quite what we had in mind, but we rebounded nicely with a move to Pos (post) 8!
We ultimately moved our 2400 m high camp to Pos 8 – ah, much better!
2400 meter ‘high camp’ at Pos 8. FYI – we were not responsible for all of that garbage on the ground!
Mossy forest at 2500 m elevation.
Mossy forest at 2600 m.
At about 2600 m, the forest becomes scrubby with Rhododendron and a variety of other small trees and shrubs with small, waxy, serrated leaves.
At 2600 m, we also have a view of the upper edge of the mega-landslide that occurred when the inner side of Bawakaraeng’s caldera wall collapsed on March 26, 2004.
A view of the Bawakaraeng mega-landslide, which extended for more than 7 km and involved an estimated 232 million cubic meters of substrate.
Beautiful mossy forest at ~2750 m elevation.
The first morning after setting our high camp, I took a hike up to the summit of Bawakaraeng. These friendly students were holed up in a tent near the summit (pos 10) to avoid the light rain. As soon as they saw me, they invited me in and offered me warm food. The friendliness of the people of Indonesia never ceases to amaze me!
Here I am with my new friends in the tent. If I rolled into a campsite anywhere in America, I seriously doubt that I would receive such a friendly reception. Now imagine if I were an Indonesian “foreigner” – its just remarkable to me that Indonesians continue to give Americans and other “bules” the benefit of the doubt..
The summit marker of Bawakaraeng. Because of the rain, I had the summit to myself on this morning.
Above ~2000 meters, there appeared to be just one species of herp – the direct-developing microhylid frog Oreophryne variabilis shown here (collected at 2500 m). I heard these frogs calling as high as 2700 m and I am sure they approach the summit of Gunung Bawakaraeng above 2800 m elevation.
Oreophryne variabilis were often found in the thick moss that festooned the trunks of trees. This individual was collected at 2500 m elevation and within a few meters of the brown individual in the prior photo. These frogs come in a multitude of colors, which is consistent with the specific epithet “variabilis”.
Molly with a super fluffy Lenomys meyeri collected by Heru Handika. These large rats are rarely captured and thus a highlight of our mammal sampling efforts. This was just moments before the specimen was proudly presented to Rajah Tikus Kevin Rowe
We made a group trip to the summit a few days after my initial visit. The immediate vicinity of the summit is covered with tussock grass, but its clear that this is not technically above tree line (it is likely the soil quality rather than climate that is responsible).
Here I am with my graduate student, Jeff Frederick, on the summit of Gunung Bawakaraeng. That’s the Indonesian flag in Jeff’s hand – don’t let our president know or Jeff might have his citizenship revoked!
At this moment, I was indisputably the highest man on the mountain.
Gunung Lompobatang projecting above the clouds as viewed from the summit area of Gunung Bawakaraeng. This is Bawakaraeng’s slightly larger sister summit (3874 m).
Gunung Bawakaraeng and Gunung Lompobatang are separated by a deep valley with sheer cliff walls. This is looking back up to the summit area after following a knife-edge ridge down a bit.
This is the elusive Island Thrush – Luke Bloch’s holy grail bird of Indonesia. Sure, THIS population looks almost identical to an American Robin, but you have to understand how cool they look in other parts of their range!
Teams Herp, Bird, Arthropod, and Parasite returned to the 1700 m “low” camp after several days at high camp. Team Bird, having been very successful in high camp, found themselves with a huge backlog that required around the clock work and only afforded a few hours of sleep each night. Here I finally caught a glimpse of Rauri “hitting the wall” after several near-sleepless nights. With Luke Bloch, Newt Rockney, and Jeff Frederick.
On our final day in camp after everyone else had made their way down the mountain, just Rauri remained at the prep table still trying to clear that backlog..
Breaking down camp on our final day on the mountain.
Our camp reduced to its “skeleton” – I was surprisingly sad to leave our home on the mountain for the past 23 days!
Heroic herpetologist Wahyu Tri Laksono departing camp with a load of gear.
Re-entering the quaint village of Gunung Perak on the hike down.
Our elite team of MZB scientists looking refreshed after a night back in the village of Gunung Perak. From left to right we have Hadi (birds), Sarino (arthropods), Apandi (mammals), Heru (mammals, Museum Victoria), Irham (birds), and Tri (herps). This is only part of the MZB team that spent time on the mountain – not in the photo are Pungki, Sopian, or Sigit.
Just after departing for Makassar from the village of Gunung Perak, we stopped for a photograph of the beautiful valley with its terraced rice fields.
Terraced rice fields are an engineering marvel..
Our giant gear pile filled a house in Makassar.
Each of our trips seems destined to end with a presentation at a local university. These are actually super fun because the audiences are very enthusiastic and appreciative. Note – whether or not there is a space between “A” and “biotic” actually changes the meaning of the sentence dramatically 🙂
Makassar as seen from our departing plane.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world with a population of 262 million people. As such, it seems like virtually every bit of available land is occupied, including these small islands off the Sulawesi coast.
Once back on Java, Jeff and I visited Pak Djoko in Bandung which afforded us a chance to pick up some coffee (my tribute to Sharon). 20 kilos of Toraja in this black duffel – I’ve rarely felt more like a drug dealer than when transporting our stash back to Jakarta from Bandung! Kopi Aroma now limits every customer to 5 kilos of coffee!
Rauri admiring our coffee stash. The street value of this coffee in America must be about…
