The morning started early - 5:00 AM to prepare for our 6:00 AM departure. Our driver picked us up in the near-dawn light and drove us to the office where we met up with our tour guides - two of the MIS workers in Papua. The provided me with a jacket, verified we had our PPE, and off we went.
Our first stop was at a security check point where we all had to scan our ID's before entering the restricted area. Shortly after passing the security check point, we began our ascent. It's difficult to comprehend exactly how high and how fast we climbed without actually doing it. Words and pictures don't do the journey justice, but I'll do my best.
First, the hotel is in Timika, at 75 ft above sea level. Kual Kencana, where the offices are, is at about 100 ft. The security check point is at 1800 feet. From the security check point, there is nothing but road all the way to Tembagapura (Copper City). Tembagapura is at 6600 feet - over a mile high. From there, you climb to 9500 feet, which is the base of Grasberg. For us, the final ascent to Grasberg - at 13,000 feet was done via a Gondola, and then another vehicle to reach the mine. A climb of nearly 2.5 miles - straight up.
Most of the way to Tembagapura is two-way, winding dirt roads that are at a 40 degree incline. There are a few places where the road is very steep - almost a 70 degree incline - so they have paved the uphill side of the road. Some places are too narrow for two vehicles, espcially when you consider that some of these vehicles are heavily loaded semi-trailers loaded down with explosives - so only one vehicle is permitted at a time. Two such instances of the one-way traffic are two tunnels - one a half-mile in length, the other nearly a mile long - that burrow through the mountain. The trip was made even more ominous by the fact that today was overcast, and we spent much of our trip ensconced in clouds with about 20 feet of visibility.
When you arrive in Tembagapura, you have to scan yourself in once again, and if you made the ascent in under 35 minutes, they give you a ticket for speeding. We did it in 36 minutes - and were white knuckled most of the way. Tembagapura is an absolutely beautiful city nestled in the mountains of Papua. It reminds me of Estes Park, Colorado, or the Pacific Northwest. Green everywhere, and waterfalls around every turn. The temperature had dropped significantly, too. In Timika, it was hot and muggy. In Tembagapura, I could see my breath when we exited the vehicle, though, because I was wearing three shirts and a jacket, I was not cold.
None of us had eaten breakfast, due to the early departure, so when we arrived in Tembagapura, we ate at the company sponsored mess hall. We then had a quick tour of the MIS facilities in Tembagapura, and prepared for our trip to Grasberg. Before leaving for the mine, we had to put on our PPE. It turned out, I should have tried on BOTH boots, not just one, before we left because one boot fit, the other was two sizes smaller and didn't fit. So, we had to make a quick stop by the guest house and get me two, equally sized boots before we went up the mountain.
The trip from Tembagapura to Grasberg is just as steep, if not steeper. We parked our vehicle at the mill, and climbed the hill about 200 feet to catch the tram, or gondola, to the top of the hill. We were at such a high altitude, the 200 foot walk up hill and then a flight of stairs had my heart pounding and me winded. We had to scan our badges once again before boarding the gondola.
Now, if you are afraid of heights, this is not the ride for you. You are climbing 3000 verticle feet, in a large metal box, suspended by steel cables, in about a mile's distance. There are very few bars to hold onto, and all the windows open - if you want them to. The view, however, is spectacular. When the Gondola stops, you are at the base operations of the Grasberg mine. Due to the overcast, we might as well have been in cloud city. There was a constant drizzle - as we were in the middle of a cloud the entire time. Visibility wasn't great, but the clouds were thin enough that we could still see what we came to see.
From here, we took a Land Rover to the repair shop. We saw the mining vehicles that were under repair. This was my first time actually standing next to a haul truck, and they are definitely enormous. At 15 stories tall, it seems impossible to think that they just made the same journey we did. Impossible, that is, until you learn that the come up in pieces and are reassembled at the top.
Our next stop was the dispatch center and the crushers. The dispatch center coordinates activity of all vehicles at the top of the mountain. The crusher is where we grind the rock we've mined into small particles that are then conveyed to the mill and turned into concentrate, or "slurry". That slurry is then sent down the hill through the use of large pipes and gravity alone all the way to our port where it is loaded on to ships and sent to the smelters to turn into copper.
From the crushers, we went to the mine dispatch center. This is basically the mine cockpit. If you've ever seen inside an airport control tower, the mine cockpit is similar. There are several people constantly monitoring all facets of the mine operations from the vehicles in the mine, to the boilers and crushers. Any time something goes down, or any system is operating outside the defined normal parameters, their screens alert them to the variance and they dispatch someone to correct the issue.
From the mine dispatch center, we went to the Grasberg overlook. The mine is absolutely enormous. It's like a big auditorium with rows upon enormous rows of seats. In the picture, if you look over my right shoulder, you'll notice a few specks on the wall behind me. Basically, go diagonally up and to the left from my right shoulder (your left). At the end of what appears to be a gray shelf, there are some black dots. Those specks are the same haul trucks in the previous pictures. That should give you some perspective on size.
We left the Grasberg open pit mine, and then went into the underground mine. We all scanned our badges, and the car started the descent into the tunnel. We drove for what seemed like miles, nearly straight down, before we finally saw people. The undergound mines are all single-lane tunnels, but the lanes go both directions. To accomodate bi-directional, single lane tunnels, every hundred feet or so, there are pullouts that you can pull into to allow other cars to pass. We had to use this once or twice. We stayed in the car for the whole trip, and when we emerged, we were at the mill, over 3000 feet lower than where we began.
We drove back down to Tembagapura and had our lunch at the mess hall. After a quick stop at the local mall so everyone but me could make a purchase, we headed back to Timika. We stopped at a scenic outlook and took a few pictures and were back in Kuala Kencana an hour after leaving Tembagapura. The only disappointment was the cloud cover prevented us from seeing the glacier atop the mountain range on Papua.
Our driver met us there, and we decided to take a trip into the town of Timika. We stopped at a few of the shops, and I finally broke down and bought some wood carvings that I thought were pretty cool. They reminded me of the stone figures from The Blue Lagoon movie where the natives would make human sacrifices.
By far, this was one of the most amazing days I've had. We went through several climates, saw some amazing beauty, and witnessed man's ingenuity at work. I took dozens of pictures, but, due to the bandwidth considerations on Papua, I've only uploaded those that were key to the telling of the story. I'll upload the rest when I return to Jakarta on Saturday.
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