Puncak Jaya or Carstensz Pyramid is a peak that is part of Barisan Sudirman located in Papua Province, Indonesia. Puncak Jaya has a height of 4,884 m and in the vicinity there is the Carstensz glacier, the only tropical glacier in Indonesia, which is likely to soon disappear due to global warming.
The plateau around the peak was originally inhabited before any contact with the Europeans, and its peak is known as Nemangkawi in Amungkal. Puncak Jaya was previously named the Carstensz Pyramid after the Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon named it when he first saw the glacier at the top of a mountain on a sunny day in 1623.
The Puncak Jaya snowfield was successfully climbed in early 1909 by a Dutch explorer, Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz with six Kenyah recruited from Apau Kayan in North Kalimantan. Lorentz National Park which also includes the Carstensz Pyramid, was founded in 1919 following the report of this expedition.
In 1936, the Dutch-initiated Carstensz expedition, unable to determine exactly which of the three peaks was the highest, decided to try to climb each peak. Anton Colijn, Jean Jacques Dozy, and Frits Julius Wissel reached the East Carstensz glacier and the Ngga Pulu Peak on 5 December. Due to the melting glacier, the height of Puncak Ngga Pulu is 4,862 meters, but it has been estimated that in 1936 (when the glacier was still covered by a 13-square-kilometer peak), Ngga Pulu is indeed the highest peak with a height of more than 5,000 meters.
After that Puncak Jaya was never climbed until 1962, by an expedition led by Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer, with three other expedition members, Robert Philip Temple, Russell Kippax, and Albertus Huizenga. Philip Temple of New Zealand, previously led an expedition to the area and pioneered access routes to the mountains.
In 1963, the peak was renamed Puncak Soekarno, after which later changed to Puncak Jaya. The name of the Carstensz Pyramid itself is still used among mountain climbers.
While Puncak Jaya is still a bit ice-covered, there are several glaciers on the slopes, including Carstensz Glacier, Northwall Firn West Glacier, and Northwall Firn East Glacier, recently rumored to have vanished.
The glacier at Trikora Peak in the Maoke Mountains disappeared completely between 1939 and 1962. Since the 1970s, evidence from satellite images shows Puncak Jaya's glaciers have shrunk rapidly. Meren glaciers melted between 1994 and 2000. An expedition led by Paleoclimatology Lonnie Thompson in 2010 found that glaciers disappeared at a thickness level of 7 meters per year.
