Puncak Jaya

Where is Puncak Jaya?

Puncak Jaya is part of the Sudirman Range.

You will find it in: Indonesia.

Summit: 4.079° S, 137.158° E

The story behind it

Puncak Jaya formed when a piece of ancient sea floor was scraped up and pushed skyward as the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates collided, which is why its rock is full of fossilised sea creatures even though it now pokes above the clouds. It was named after Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon, who spotted its snowy peak from a ship far below in 1623 and was mocked back home for claiming there was snow near the equator; nobody believed him for nearly 300 years. The local Amungme and Dani peoples have long considered the surrounding highlands sacred. Reaching the summit today usually means a genuine rock-climbing route with ropes and harnesses, unlike the walk-up routes on some of the other Seven Summits, plus days of trekking through dense rainforest just to get there — and it once carried real glaciers, though these equatorial ice fields have now almost entirely melted away.

Find it on the globe

Puncak Jaya is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.