It was 6 AM when we were arrived at the top of this mountain (Welirang 3156m above sea level), and the beautiful views welcome us nicely. Outstanding color of the sunrise, the peak of Arjuno along the way up is so cleared and Semeru in the distance in blue color, the city of Batu and surroundings looks like a huge valley from the top. We descended down the mountain ridges filled with small gravel mountain’s rock towards the natural pipes of sulfur. From the distance we could hear the roar of the ‘natural kitchen’ that boiled those sulfur and ready to be picked.
When we were very closed to those source, we saw how a few miners, mine the sulfur manually, with bare hands. No special or adequate equipments used a long the process. There are only long boots – 1 or 2 miners even just wear slippers – thin knitting cloves and used plastic sacks to collect all those sulfur and carried it on their shoulder and walked on steep trail with no protection into a flat area 500m away from the source. One slip step, they will be gone. Dead literally. They will put all those sacks there until they collected up to 200 Kg. They will use manual pushcart down to pos 2 where it takes around 4 hours to go down, and where all those sulfur collected and picked up by hardtop jeep and gets their payments once a week. 3 or 4 miners can collect to 400Kg by 2 consecutive times up to the source and down to pos 2 in one day. There are about 20 men working in this fields but they will not working together at the same time due to unsafe fields.
I was so amazed by looking all those men working in these fields for years. Some of those even working and make money from it with their 3rd generation.
Tips;
- If you have a chance to visit this place all you have to do is don’t come to close to the source, as the ground is so steep and the haze could give you a hard breath. Note: for those who have breathing problem, please be away from this spot.
- Don’t talk too much with all those miner, because it can disrupts the rhythm of their work. Besides, they won’t like it either.
- If you have things left like snacks, bottle of water, matches which you might not need them anymore, you can give or leave it for them. They will be so happy to received it. But please don’t give anything just like you want to reduce rubbish from your rucksack.
- Please always bring your own waste or rubbish back and put it on trash bin.
Mount Welirang (3156m above sea level) – Welirang which means Sulfur in the Java language is located in East Java 76KM down South of Surabaya the Capital of East Java. This mountain is also one out of many other active volcanoes. Java island with total area 138.700 KM2 with total population 136,610,500 (based data population 2010) is a home for almost 50 mountains both active or non active volcanoes, and Welirang is the 7th tallest mountain in this island. Start from the West to the East of the island, the mountains with beautiful landscape along with mythology or legend that comes with it make it become very interesting. Like Mount Welirang, in the Java community ancient belief and written in the Ancient Book of Tantu Pagelaran, Welirang formed from the fragments debris of mount Sumeru when transfer it from West to the East Java. Mount Welirang at an altitude of 3156 meters above sea level can climb through Tretes. From Surabaya, stop at Pandaan, then from there to change transport towards Tretes.
kudubatja 