:: Mount Tambora Trekking ::
Mount Tambora Adventure Trekking
|
Route |
Duration |
What We'll Found There |
|
Pancasila
Village - Pos I |
1 Hours |
At Pos I, there are basecamp
and spring water |
|
Pos I - Pos II |
1 Hours |
Pos II, there we'll found a
small river |
|
Pos II - Pos III |
3 Hours |
Accross
tropical forest straight to Pos II, there we'll
found spring water |
|
Pos III - Pos IV |
1 Hours |
Tropical Forest |
|
Pos IV - Pos V |
30 minutes |
Tropical Forest |
|
Pos V - Crater Rim |
2 Hours |
Accros
tropical forest to Edelweis vegetation and
desert. |
|
Crater Rim - Peak |
1,5 Hours |
Accross
desert |
How to Reach
The ways to reach this area are:
-
Mataram–Sumbawa–Dompu–Kempo–Tambora,
By Land ( 15 Hours)
-
Mataram – Bima, By Air (35
minutes)
-
Bima – Dompu – Tambora, By Land
(5 hours)
-
Bima – Dompu – Sanggar, By Land
(4 hours)
-
Teluk Sanggar – Tambora, By Sea
(3 hours)
Climate
According to Schmidt-Ferguson, the nature preserve has D
climate type.with rainfall 877-1500 mm per year, maximum
temperature on daylight 28°c-34°c and minimum from
22°c-24°c at night.
How to reach the crater
There are some choice to reach the
crater or caldera of Mount Tambora:
-
Start the trip using airplane
from Mataram to Bima (35 minutes), continued from
Bima by car to Doropeti on south side of Tambora to
the location of Volcano observation (5 hours).
-
by car from Mataram to Kayangan
Port and cross to Alas with Ferry until Pototano
Port. Then continue to Doropeti (15 hours).
To reach the lips of caldera, the
climbing activities can be done from many side, such as:
-
From west, Calabai village and
Pancasila village until west Caldera, this is
general way, it needs 2-3 days.
-
From North, Kawind nae village
untill north Caldera, it is shorter and fast from
the forest but it is climb from the beginning until
the top of the mountain.
-
From the noth-west, Doropeti
vellage to the east untill west caldera and north
west calseera. It is pass the woods where there are
“jelatang” or “maladi” , the plant which hurt our
skin when it touched.
-
From south, Doropeti, 12 km to
east. It will pass the road to the north and
climbing from PT. BA palantation until south
caldera, with one day trip. This way is passing the
dry savanna. But if we use car we can reach until
1200 mdpl in 3 hours, then continued on foot in 3-4
hours. (Heryadi & Iqbal, Mount Fire,West Nusa
Tenggara)
A big Volcano that erupted in the 19th century
The
paroxysmal eruption of Mt. Tambora
on the island of
Sumbawa in April 1815 – despite having triggered a world
wide historic event – is astonishingly neglected in
studies of volcanic activity. The world wide event
referred to was the so-called "Year without a Summer" -
the exceptionally cold months of 1816. In addition to
this, Mt. Tambora's eruption far-eclipsed in violence
and ejecta the more famous eruption of Krakatau (Krakatoa)
in 1883, which also had an impact on the world's
weather.
Though disappointing, the reason for part of this
neglect is not hard to find. There exist few
contemporary records of the eruption and what there is
has seen little reprinting in modern works. Nonetheless,
enough data is now available that a more definitive
study can and should be undertaken. The intent of this
posting is to synthesize and integrate what is available
and hopefully inspire further investigation.
Sir Thomas Stamford
Raffles, later founder of Singapore,
was at the time of the eruption serving as Lt. Governor
of Java, based at his capital in Batavia. He had
occupied this post since September 1911, a month after
the British had wrested Batavia from control of
Napoleon's France. Having heard of the great human
distress and disastrous phenomena accompanying the
outbreak, he gave orders that British residents gather
information and report if possible to him on the effects
of the eruption On April 18, Lt. Owen Phillips was
dispatched with a shipload of rice for relief to the
disaster zone. It is from Phillips' findings, and
Raffles subsequent submission of his report to the
Natural Historical Society of Batavia in September 1815
that we learn after-the-fact of the details of the
eruption. It is important to note that no native
accounts save one are known to survive, and the
character and form of the eruption must be reconstructed
"retroactively" working backwards from the Raffles
report and the physical aftermath on the islands. With
this challenge in mind, we proceed.
The eruption
Even allowing
for the scant documention, the
characteristic about the eruption that immediately jumps
out at the researcher is its terrifying speed and
brevity. When this is contrasted with its stupendous
scale and effects, the event becomes a singularly
sobering and daunting one. Perhaps only the Mt. Tarawera
eruption of 1886 in New Zealand compares in modern times
for sheer suddenness and destructive force of eruption.
A word of explanation is in order here. Though such
celebrated eruptions as Krakatau, Mt. St. Helens, Mt.
Pelee, and more recently El Chichon and Pinatubo,
capture the public eye and respect, all of those
powerful eruptions had fairly lengthy eruptive
sequences. In short, for those with mind to do so, there
was ample time if not always means to vacate the danger
zone. With Tarawera it was different---in 1886 in the
space of one night a triple peak mountain range near
Lake Rotomahana suddenly split open and erupted.
Literally some 4,000 people who had gone to their beds
that evening would never again wake up. Such a
disastrous and only slightly less deadly suddenness
accompanied the Tambora eruption.
The Setting
Almost nothing is
reliably known about the form and
history of Mt. Tambora prior to the 1815 eruption. (Some
indication of the lack of exploration of the region is
gained by noting that the famous Komodo Dragons on the
adjacent island of Komodos were only discovered in
1911!). However, mountains being what they are, the
remnants tell a great deal to the expert eye. Although
the top of the mountain collapsed in 1815, what still
stands is unusual and provocative in its features.
According to the best available evidence, before the
eruption Mt. Tambora was a volcanic cone 4,000 meters
high and 60 kilometers in diameter at sea level; densely
blanketed in forest. It is reported to have originally
had two summits, and there were several parasitic cones
on the east and northeast slopes. What is unusual is
that studies indicate that in its first phase of
activity Tambora was a shield volcano, not unlike those
of Iceland or Hawaii. Later, a bedded cone was built up
on top of this, possibly the result of a change in the
composition of the magma. The mountain, which may well
have begun life as an island separate from Sumbawa, in
time rose to dominate a peninsula joining it to Sumbawa
on the southwest flank. By the time the Europeans came
to occupy Sumbawa in the 18th century Mt. Tambora had
lapsed into a deep dormancy. This state of affairs
continued for a decade more into the 19th century. Then
the volcanic energies once again burst forth.
At the time
of the Tambora eruption, some 140,000
natives were reported to be living on Sumbawa. Sumbawa
is long vaguely rectangular island running nearly from
west to east. About a third the way from the eastern
end, on the north side, a large peninsula projects
northwestward like the trigger of a gun. But this
trigger belonged to a cannon capable of force like no
general of the age could ever have imagined. For it is
on this penninsula, the Sanggar Peninsula, that Mt.
Tambora stands. Scattered around in 1815 some 12, 000
people lived in a handful of villages and towns
clustered on the peninsula of Tambora. Forty miles to
the eastward, a small British contingent headed by a
Resident resided at the village port of Bima, the
capital of the European colonists. Bima was located
beside Bima Bay, a deep indentation in the northern side
of the east end of Sumbawa, and about 40 miles east of
Tambora's peninsula.
Though some mild
spewings of ash were alleged to have
occurred at the summit in the spring of 1814, the first
real and almost only warnings were a rolling succession
of deep shocks through the Dutch East Indies on the
evening of April 5. In Dutch Macassar the warship
Benares of the East India Company lay at anchor, the
officers and crew perturbed by what seemed to be a naval
battle taking place just over the horizon to the south.
As dusk neared, the barrage seemed closer, with heavy
artillery seemingly sprinkled with intermitent rifle
volleys; just then a detachment of troops arrived
aboard, and the Benares was ordered to put to sea to
investigate. But they found nothing nor the source of
the "cannonade", although they remained at sea for three
days. In the words of a modern author, "that was just as
well. For if they had, there was nothing they, nor all
the troops and ships in the world, could have done about
it." Indeed, for their quarry was no pirate over the
horizon: but more than 200 miles south, and what was
fast becoming the most explosive eruption of recorded
history.
With sunrise on
April 6 light ashes began falling on
Batavia. The sun became obscured in the skies over Java,
"having the appearance of being enveloped in a fog. The
weather was sultry and the atmosphere close, and still
the sun seemed shorn of its rays, and the general
stillness and pressure of the atmosphere seemed to
forebode an earthquake. This lasted several days." Oddly
enough, the rumblings and explosions – though they
continued – now seemed to come less frequently and with
less noise. The Europeans were perplexed and concerned,
but some of the Java natives, however, were delighted:
priests declared with confidence and satisfaction that
the thunder and dark was the sign that the gods of the
mountains were coming forth to free the island from
foreign rule. However as the ash fall grew and
persisted, while the rumblings and explosions continued,
all those in-the-know now realized it must be a volcanic
outbreak, and the speculation was that Merapi, Kelut, or
Bromo was the likely culprit. With the cause if not the
source of the disturbance identified, the Europeans at
least became less concerned and ceased to pay much
attention to it, for this volcanic outbreak was not yet
"considered of greater importance than those which have
occasionally burst forth in Java".
This educated complacency abruptly shattered on April
10. As if rebuking their hubris, as the afternoon came
,
suddenly the roar and detonations like blasting gravel
and cannon renwed, even stronger than before, and this
time a truly menacing and darkened cloud of ash billowed
over from the east. This time it was even greater than
before, so that the sun was almost blotted out. In the
eastern part of Java, the situation was even more
severe. At Solo and Rembang some reported small and
continuous earthquakes, and the explosions were
tremendous, booming frequently through the 11th with
such violence as to shake the houses noticeably. And
still the might of the detonations only increased, and
the . Once again the priests sang with joy that
liberation was at hand, and even some of the Europeans
now felt fear and concern. What was happening? None of
the suspected volcanoes were known to be in eruption,
and yet almost 2,500 miles of island chain was being
rocked by cataclysmic quakes. Not a few must have
contemplated the fate of Pompeii and
Herculaneum---buried by Vesuvius in AD. 79 – but there
was little anyone could do but wait. These were the
conditions on Java and neighboring islands as dusk
approached on April 10. But for those living on the
peninsula upon which Tambora stood, matters would grow
much worse this night. For in the late afternoon of the
10th Mt. Tambora in fact entered paroxysmal eruption and
would inflict a devastation that would leave precious
few survivors to tell the tale.
Fortunately
, despite the primitive conditions prevailing
on the island, via Lt. Phillips, we do indeed possess
one eyewitness account from the Rajah of Sangir. Sangir
was on the north shore of Sumbawa, just to the east of
Tambora's peninsula, less than twenty-five miles from
the summit. The Rajah was in his village at the time of
the eruption, he told Phillips, and in fact witnessed
its climatic acceleration and effect. As such, his
report is incredibly valuable. Moreover, allowing for
the inexperience and comprehension of the witness, the
Rajah of Sangir's words show – to the volcanologist – a
remarkable and likely trustworthy immediacy and clarity.
He stated that "about 7pm on the 10th of April, three
distinct columns of flame burst forth near the top of
Tomboro mountain (all of them apparently within the
verge of the crater), and after ascending to a very
great height, their tops united in the air in a troubled
and confused manner." The words "troubled and confused
manner" are a singularly vivid and accurate description
of the volcanic ash clouds that boil upward from
paroxysmal eruptions. He next says "In a short time, the
whole mountain next to Sangir appeared like a body of
liquid fire, extending itself in every direction. The
fire and columns of flame continued to rage with
unabated fury, until the darkness caused by the quantity
of falling matter obscured it at about 8pm." Hence,
within an hour of the primary outbreak, the falling ash
has obscured the summit from view. This too is
consistent with such eruptions, and vouches for its
reliability. The "liquid fire" is almost certainly
pyroclastic surges rather than true lava flows, but this
point cannot be proven.
As the Rajah and his people watched in consternation,
"stones" (volcanic bombs and lapilli) began to fall on
Sangir, "some of them as large as two fists, but
generally not larger than walnuts". Between 9 and 10pm
ashes began to fall, and "and soon after a violent
whirlwind ensued which blew down nearly every house in
the village of Sangir, carrying the ataps, or roofs, and
light parts away with it. In the part of Sangir
adjoining [facing] Tomboro its effects were much more
violent, tearing up the roots of the largest trees and
carrying them into the air, together with men, horses,
cattle, and whatever else came within its influence. The
sea rose nearly twelve feet higher than it had ever been
known to do before, and completely spoiled the the only
small spots of rice land at Sangir, sweeping away houses
and everything within its reach. The whirlwind lasted
about an hour. No explosions were heard till the
whirlwind had ceased, at about 11pm."
Whatever
atmospheric phenomena caused the absence of
explosion sounds during the whirlwind, it ended with it.
Starting about an hour before midnight, stupendously
loud explosions were heard, "from midnight to the
evening of the 11th, they continued without
intermission"! Given the conditions prevailing in Sangir,
the plight of the villages actually on Tambora's flanks
and the peninsula could only be imagined. In fact, they
were scenes out of the end of the world, with "great
tracts of land being covered by lava, several streams of
which", issuing from the summit of the disintegrating
mountain "reached the sea." In several places, whole
portions of land suddenly subsided, and were swallowed
by the inrushing sea.
The blanket of ashes was so heavy that they collapsed
the roofs of the Resident's and many other dwellings in
Bima and rendered them uninhabitable. The Dompu Palace
at Dora Bata was also buried with ash. At Bima the
thickness of ash was later found to be one and a half
feet deep, but at Sangir much n
earer to the volcano it
was three feet deep. "Although the wind at Bima was
queerly still during the whole time, the sea rolled in
upon the shore, and filled the lower parts of the houses
with water a foot deep. Every boat was forced from the
anchorage and driven on shore." All around Sumbawa the
neighboring islands reported similar odd pheonmena, as
"the sea rose suddenly to the height of from two to
twelve feet, a great wave rushing upon the estuaries,
and then suddenly subsiding." On the adjacent island of
Bali, the ash lay a foot deep as well.
Throughout the night of the 10th and through the day of
the 11th the mountain raged with an incredible fury and
violence. As if sending a warning to the growing
confidence and pride of western man, Mt. Tambora roared
with an unbridled and unmatched defiance that rocked the
entire East Indies. An eruption column of ash and dust
boiled an incredible 28 miles into the sky, as lightning
danced with the fury of dervishes amidst it.
The enigmatic detonations
began again on the afternoon
of April 11, and this time houses and buildings in Macassar began to actually shake. The warship Benares
put to sea, heading southward to investigate. However,
by noon on the 12th the sky had become almost opaque and
almost filled with fine ash. Daylight was scarcely
visible, as a stygian darkness descended. Native village
shamans proudly and confidently declared that the old
gods had burst forth and were about to drive the
Europeans from Indonesia. As it happened, nothing of the
sort occurred, and after three days the skies gradually
brightened again. The thundering ceased abruptly.
Finally the eruption's fury began to wane late on the
11th, the sharp and loud detonations moderating and
"heard only at intervals". But on the 12th far to the
west of Sumbawa, floating pumice still formed a mass two
feet thick and miles in extent! So thick was it that
ships had difficulty breaking through the drifting mass.
In Java, the "haziness and heat of the atmosphere, and
occasional fall of volcanic ashes, continued until the
14th, and in some parts of the island until the 17th of
April". However, the Javanese were lucky: heavy and
timely falls of rain ensued, helping to wash away the
ash and clear the sky so that severe injury to crops and
outbreaks of epidemic were avoided. Alas for the
Sumbawans, there would be no such reprieve.. At last, on
July 15, 1815, the last explosions ceased. The skies
cleared, and revealed was a Dantesque panorama of
destruction and ruin.
On Mt. Tambora, the once irregular and lofty summit had
been lopped off, as if with a knife, forming a
flat-topped massif capped by a stupendous caldera. Given
the low-order of eruptions since 1815, modern figures
are probably very close to those of 1815, with little
change to the mountain since: The eruption had formed a
caldera 6 kilometers in diameter and 1,110 meters deep.
The highest point was (and is now) 2,850 meters above
sea level.
The loss of
life and destruction was appalling. Of the
thriving village-towns in the province of Tomboro near
the mountain, comprising some 12,000 inhabitants, only
small Tempo and its forty inhabitants remained. All the
others had been obliterated by whirlwinds or engulfed as
frightening subsidences of land occurred. No trace
remained of the villages of Tomboro and Pekate, and "no
vestige of a house" was left. During the eruption, the
town of Tomboro on the west side of Sumbawa had been
"overflowed by the sea, which encroached upon the shore
so that water remained permanently 18 feet deep in
places where there was land before." Only five or six
from both towns were known to have even survived. Of the
others only twenty-six badly burned people of a party
out from Pekate managed to paddle their canoes away from
the peninsula and survive. The devastation was
concentrated on the north and west sides of the
peninsula of the mountain, the "trees and herbage of
every description, along the whole of the north and west
sides…" had been "completely destroyed, with the
exception of a high point of land near the spot where
the village of Tomboro once stood." Out at sea, there
was huge mass of floating trees littering the surface of
the water for miles around the peninsula.
Nor
were conditions much better in the eastern part of
the island around Bima. Famine of extraordinary and
severe intensity broke out, taking the lives of
thousands. Having arrived on Sumbawa and writing from
Bima about August 3, Lt. Phillips reported: "The extreme
misery to which the inhabitants have been reduced is
shocking to behold. There were still on the road side
the remains of several corpses, and the marks of where
many others had been interred; the villages almost
entirely deserted and the houses fallen down, the
surviving inhabitants having dispersed in search of
food." The famine was so severe in Sangir, Phillips
reported, that even one of the Rajah of Sangir's [the
learned eyewitness who described the eruption above] own
daughters had died from hunger. Phillips gave the man
three coyangs of rice, for which he was most thankful,
but such help paled before the disaster engulfing the
Dutch East Indies.
The nature of the eruption
From the foregoing it is immediately seen that the
Tambora eruption is exceptional for its ferocity and
rapid acceleration to full climax. Despite the over-use
of the example by popular literature, in this case it is
indeed useful to compare it to the eruption of Mt.
Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The outbreaks share notable
similarities: [1] a fairly short-term series of
pre-monitory quakes, [ 2] a heavily wooded and long
dormant volcano that like Vesuvius, seems to have a
hybrid basaltic and andesitic charcter---possibly having
like Vesuvius risen originally from under shallow waters
and joined to the island by peninsula. [3] a paroxysmal
"clearing of the vent" eruption cloud that sent a large
cauliflower skyward, [4] a rapid descent of darkness
from a falling ash cloud, [5] the appearance of
localized, possibly identical "base surges" fanning out
from the disintegrating cone, [6] and an accleration
through paroxysmal eruption and climax in the space of
less than 72 hours, followed by a rapid tapering off of
activity.
It is just possible that Tambora triggered a partial
collapse of itself early in the eruption, unleashing an
eruption plume of sudden and horrific force, not unlike
Mt. St. Helens in 1980. The reason for suggesting this
is in the sheer power and velocity of the eruption
column, as well as its fairly short duration. It appears
to point to a fairly sudden, preciptous rather than a
steadily mounting release. But this is merely informed
speculation, and though interesting, is impossible to
verify at present.
No later than April 5, but possibly earlier, Tambora was
shaken by a "throat-clearing" eruption that punched a
new vent in the summit and cast forth a volley of ash
over the Flores Sea. Though the eyewitness accounts
describe only the climatic phase of the eruption and not
the preliminaries, it seems impossible to assume that
the Sumbawans were unaware that Tambora was now active.
Possibly being experienced with neighboring Bali
andLombok's eruptions, they did not think it too serious
at first. Or possibly evacuating was not a particularly
practical option for most. In any case, most inhabitants
of Tambora's peninsula remained where they were as the
eruption grumbled on into April 6. By sunset of the next
day, the activity apparently faded, nearly to a halt,
though the rumblings continued. Perhaps this lulled any
doubts the people may have had. The eruption appeared to
be waning, and few sought to flee the mountain's fertile
environs. Whatever circumstances prompted this choice,
it sealed the fate of 90% of the inhabitants.
Links:
www.mount-tambora.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora
www.rinjaninationalpark.com
www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Sumbawa/blog-341303.html
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