Trekking in the Baliem Valley: What we did (very specifically)

A cautionary tale: Before we start with the detailed route description, one caveat (admission actually). On Day 4, we found ourselves alone on the trail, with no one to ask directions, and trail decisions to make (recall the “no signage” thing). With no real map, we had been relying on locals to point the way. We hadn’t seen a human in hours. As if scripted by Hollywood, the clouds rolled in, it started to rain, and fog made seeing more than our feet below us, impossible. Cutting to the chase, several hours later we found ourselves, well, not entirely sure, but pretty sure, not on the right trail. It was late in the afternoon, pouring rain, zero visibility, and somewhere on the side of a mountain in Papua.

By what can only be called luck, we happened upon a small grass lean-to, presumably set up as a temporary day shelter for someone out in the mountains, tending to sweet potatoes. It was a gift, and we took it. We spent the night in our little grass lean-to (after all, we had everything we needed and were quite comfy). The morning was, as the saying goes, “another day”. We arose to good weather, waited for the fog to lift, found the main trail, and returned to our original schedule. While “all is well that ends well”, it was a stressful 24 hours, and a reminder that things do not always go as planned, and you need to be ready for an emergency overnight.

Now, the reason I am describing all of that, is because the route description I will be recommending below, does not include our little diversion to the grass lean-to. The route description, GPS route, and map below IS the main route that you want to follow (I edited out our little diversion).

The Route

Alrighty then, the Coles notes version of the route is (see map in previous section):

Day	Summary
1	From Wamena accom, drive to Sogokmo Trailhead, hike to Hitugi, overnight in Hitugi
2	From Hitugi, hike to Yogosen, overnight in Yogosen
3	From Yogosen, hike to Syokosimo, overnight in Syokosimo
4	From Syokosimo, hike to Wesagalep, overnight in Wesagalep
5	From Weagalep, hike to Tangma, overnight in Tangma.
6	From Tangma, hike to Kurima or Sugokmo Trailhead, back to Wamena via vehicle

Day 1: this is a nice, straight-forward, gradual ascending hike along mostly good, open, obvious trails. From the trailhead, go down the trail to the bridge, cross the bridge, turn right on the other side, then follow the trail to Hitugi. It is a good intro to the trip and gets you up and into the heart of the Baliem. Just ask people for “Hitugi” and they will point you in the right direction. Can’t go wrong.

Day 2: From Hitugi, the trail descends down to the Mugi River and the village of Yuarima. Go through Yuarima, about 10 minutes after Yuarima, there is a footbridge across the Mugi (can’t miss it). Cross the bridge, then go straight up the steep trail/hill, on the other side, to Upper Yuarima. From Upper Yuarima, there is a good, obvious trail going up the valley to Yogosen. Again, just ask people for “Yogosen”. It’s a big climb to Yogosen, but the trail is obvious and the scenery is stunning. There is a good water system in Upper Yuarima just before starting the trail to Yogosen. Fill up on water there.

Day 3: Coming back down from Yogosen takes a fraction of the time it took going up. At Upper Yuarima, look for a trail going off/up to the left. It’s not obvious, and is rough in spots. Ask someone for “Seikama”, and they will point you in the right direction. The trail goes up steeply, then contours along the side of the valley for a while (a bit rough of a trail), eventually coming back down to the river and the village of Syokosimo, which is right on a beautiful stretch of the river. Very nice. Just before Syokosimo, you will pass a “traditional” foot bridge (i.e., made from vines and other natural materials – but looked doable) that crosses the Mugi. That provides an alternative crossing point to go back to the north side of the Mugi.

Day 4: OK, this is crux day. After Syokosimo, things get a tad more challenging in terms of route finding until Wesagalep – mostly because it’s more remote and there are no people around (it’s the boonies). When we did it, the trail to Huerema was washed out, and we gave a local guy a snickers bar to show us the way to Huerema, which he did. We then made our own way to Wuserem on a good trail, no problem. Beyond Wuserem, we literally saw no people until Wesagalep, and took a wrong turn at one point – hence our emergency overnight (see cautionary tale above). Therefore, I would strongly recommend for Wuserem (or even Syokosimo) to Wesagalep: (1) find/pay a guy to guide you to Wesagalep (which would be very easy to arrange on the fly), or (2) have the GPS track on your GPS unit and know how to follow it (email me if you want the track file). The trails are generally decent, but it is a long, hilly, tiring trek between these 2 villages, and there are several critical trail intersections, which are not signed or obvious, and therefore give you little/no indication of which trail to take. The area though, is beautiful and worth the effort. Go for it!

Day 5: From Wesagalep, the trail is insanely steep down to the Baliem River to the footbridge (can’t miss it, it’s huge – also a bit “sketchy” in that the wooden planks look dodgy – use caution when crossing). Cross the bridge, turn right, then head back up a decent trail to Wamerek, a nice little village with beautiful views. Wamerek to Tangma is a ‘walk in the park”, or so it feels. Big, obvious, gentle trail. Beautiful area.

Day 6: Tangma to Upper Ibiroma is a steep, rough climb, but more/less obvious. Once you top out and see your first honai in Upper Ibiroma (nice views!), it’s easy sailing from there on big, wide, open trails with stunning views all the way down to Kurima. Can’t go wrong.

The Stats

The following table is a detailed breakdown of each day of our route from point to point. i.e., if you want to do the route we did, this is the schedule I would recommend, more or less.

For “Trail Difficulty” as in the table below, the following apply:

1 = good/decent, obvious trail; generally flat or gentle up/down

2 = varied conditions with challenging sections

3 = steep and/or rough trail; generally physically challenging

This is a listing of day by day hiking stats for key locations along the route. Important footnotes are below:

Day1	From	To	Length (km)	Time2 (hrs:mins)	Trail Difficulty	Comments
1	Sogokmo Trailhead3	Bridge over Baliem4	0.9	0:15	1	Easy down
1	Bridge	Seima	4.7	1:45	1	Mostly flat, some mud
1	Seima	Ikinim	3.4	1:15	1	Gradual climb, good obvious trail
1	Ikinim	Ugem	0.9	0:30	1	Gradual climb, good obvious trail
1	Ugem	Hitugi	4.5	1:45	1	Gradual climb, good obvious trail
Totals			14.4	5:30
2	Hitugi	Yuarima	3.8	1:15	1	Easy, mostly down
2	Yuarima	Yogosem	6.5	4:00	2	BIG climb, but trail is decent and obvious
Totals			10.3	5:15
3	Yogosem	Upper Yuarima	5.7	1:45	2	BIG descent, but trail is decent and obvious
3	Upper Yuarima	Seikama	3.4	2:00	2/3	Mostly a high contour, but rough trail with initial climb
3	Seikama	Syokosimo	3.3	2:00	1	Down, nice trail
Totals			12.4	5:45
4	Syokosimo	Wuserum5	3.6	1:45	2	Washouts; difficult route finding
4	Wuserum	Wesagalep6	8.7	4:00	2/3	Good trail for most of it, but has demanding climbs and descents, and river crossings; also has critical, unmarked turn-offs6
Totals			12.3	5:45
5	Wesagalep	Wamerek6	4.3	3:30	3	Very steep descent to sketchy bridge over Baliem River, then steep ascent on rough trail
5	Wamerek	Tangma	3.1	1:30	1	Easy, gentle climb
Totals			7.4	5:00
6	Tangma	Ibiroma	3.9	2:30	3	Big climb on rough trail
6	Ibiroma	Kilise	1.9	0:30	1	Nice open trail
6	Kilise	Kurima7	2.4	1:00	1	Nice open trail
Totals			8.2	4:00

¹The day indications are a guideline based on our trek.

²Times are actual hiking times, i.e., does not include break times during the day. We were generally on the trails for 6 hours a day +/-. Basic schedule was leaving around 9 am, arriving at destination village around 3 pm, with little breaks here and there.

³The “Sogokmo Trailhead” is a non-descript, side-of-the-road situation. There is nothing there. It is literally a trail going off from a pull-out in the road. If you ask someone if it goes to Seima and/or Hitugi, and they say yes, that’s it! For some reason, people call this location “Sogokmo”, but there is no town/buildings where the trail starts.

⁴This is a good walking bridge over the Baliem River. Not to be confused with the bridge over the Baliem that is located at Kurima (see footnote 6).

⁵As of June 2018, the trail between Syokosimo and Huerema disappears due to massive washouts along the river, requiring non-obvious walk-arounds. We ended up having a guy show us the way to the next village.

⁶As mentioned in the “cautionary tale” above, this is where we took a wrong turn, and ended up in the jungle between Wuserem and Wesagalep for the night. Getting to Wesagalep for the night is therefore the recommendation.

⁷We ended our trek where the pavement starts/ends in Kurima. Because we didn’t realize that the road to Sogokmo/Wamena is washed out, we erroneously ended our hike here, and had to take multiple motorcycle taxis, combined with walking across a very sketchy log bridge, to get back to Sogokmo, to finally arrange a ride back to Wamena. If we had known that, we would have continued hiking by crossing the foot bridge in Kurima, and then hiking back to Sogokmo via Seima on the east side of the Baliem River – this would be a good option to avoid the road washout issues between Kurima and Sogokmo (unless they actually fix the road on day). In other words: start and finish your trek at the Sogokmo Trailhead, where there are usually vehicles waiting to transport people back and forth to Wamena.

GPS Locations

The following is a listing of GPS locations and elevations of villages and other major features along our route. Be sure to read the footnotes below.

Location1	GPS coordinate  in decimal degrees (datum = WGS 84)		Elevation (m)
	Latitude	Longitude
Sugokmo Trailhead	S4.18939	E139.00439	1728
Bridge over Baliem-12	S4.18838	E139.01117	1623
Seima	S4.21245	E139.03810	1640
Ikinim	S4.22757	E139.06171	1881
Hitugi	S4.22300	E139.09948	2021
Yuarima	S4.22202	E139.13020	1857
Bridge over Mugi-13	S4.22074	E139.13432	1828
Yogosen	S4.24678	E139.16904	2464
Seikama	S4.22937	E139.11080	2071
Seseg	S4.23321	E139.10245	1879
Bridge over Mugi-24	S4.23646	E139.09611	1653
Syokosimo	S4.23934	E139.08858	1630
Huerema	S4.24583	E139.07398	1687
Wuserem	S4.25464	E139.07290	1743
River crossing5	S4.28808	E139.08798	2000
Wesagalep	S4.29847	E139.07003	1963
Bridge over Baliem-26	S4.28675	E139.06385	1270
Wamerek	S4.27973	E139.06046	1512
Lower Tangma	S4.26738	E139.05228	1677
Tangma	S4.26015	E139.04706	1771
Upper Ibiroma	S4.26202	E139.05817	2019
Ibiroma	S4.24732	E139.05682	1940
Kilise	S4.23515	E139.04850	1854
Kurima	S4.21885	E139.03771	1576

¹locations listed in order as you would encounter then, if you are doing the route as we did.

²Nice big footbridge, no worries.

³Nice big footbridge, no worries.

⁴We didn’t use this bridge, we passed by it on the trail. It is a traditional footbridge made out of local materials, but looks useable if you wanted to cross the Mugi at this location.

⁵A tributary to the Baliem, no bridge, but feasible to cross, if you are willing to get your feet wet.

⁶This is a big bridge, across a substantial stretch of the Baliem. Interestingly, the wooden planks in the bridge are somewhat sketchy. Caution advised – but doable.

(click on "older posts" for more)