Summit, Lake & Torean 3D2N: descend through the green canyon

We pick you up from your hotel anywhere on Lombok and drive to Sembalun. The walk in is the gentlest part of the whole trip and the part most people underrate. Wide savanna, the mountain in front of you the entire time, herds of cows you walk around. Bring sun cover. There is almost no shade out here, and the heat is heavier than the altitude.

We start walking around 9 in the morning, after registration at the park office, and stop on the trail for a hot lunch cooked by your team, not a sandwich. Then the trail tilts. The climb from the savanna floor up to the Sembalun rim is steep switchbacks for two to three hours, and this is where you stop talking and start counting steps. Your porters reach camp ahead of you, so by the time you reach the rim in the mid-to-late afternoon the tent is up and water is on for tea.

Camp sits at the edge of the crater. From here you can see the summit you will climb in the dark, and the lake you will camp beside tomorrow night. We eat early. You sleep early. It will be cold at the rim. The rim-rated sleeping bag in your kit is rated for it. We wake you at two.

We wake you at two. Light breakfast, headlamp on, and we walk out of camp around 2:30 in a slow line. The summit push is the hardest three hours of the trip. The trail is volcanic gravel on a steep slope, one step up, half a step back. Do not race. The people who race quit. Your guide walks your pace, not his.

It is cold up there. Wear everything you brought. The last hour you will wonder if you can do another hour. You can. Sunrise lands somewhere between 5:30 and 6:15 depending on the month. The cloud sea below, the caldera lake on one side, the ocean on the other, and if the light is right the shadow of the mountain falls across the cloud like a triangle. I have walked to the summit several hundred times. It has never once been the same climb.

We come down the same gravel, much faster, back to Sembalun rim camp for breakfast. Then we pack and descend roughly 1,700 m to Segara Anak. We stop at the lake for lunch and a soak in the hot springs, then carry on down the canyon another hour or two to camp at Propok, lower in the valley. The porters pitch the tents there and dinner is cooked in the canyon.

You sleep down at Propok with the day's climbing well behind you and the river close by. Tomorrow is the difference: instead of climbing back over the rim and down the Senaru forest, we follow the Torean canyon out: rivers, footbridges, hidden waterfalls.

Coffee at Propok while the air is still cold, then we follow the canyon on down. The Senaru trekkers climb up and out through forest. You go the other way, down through a green gorge, the caldera walls closing in on both sides and a river running along the floor of it.

This is the part people remember. You cross the river on wooden footbridges, walk past hot-water seeps in the rock, and turn corners onto waterfalls that aren't on any map. It is the greenest, wettest, wildest exit on the mountain, and the least walked. Most days you'll have it to yourselves.

I won't pretend it's easy underfoot. It's steep in places, the rock is wet, and a few river crossings want sure feet and a hand on the rope. Knees and grip matter more here than on the Senaru side. The loaner poles earn their place. From Propok it is about five to six hours down to Torean village, starting around 7 in the morning and reaching the valley by early afternoon. Because this is a private trek we can flex it to your pace: some groups instead spend the second night up at the lake and walk the whole canyon out in one longer day, about six and a half to seven and a half hours.

We finish at Torean village, where the driver is waiting, and bring you back to your hotel on Lombok or to Bangsal for the Gili boats. You'll be muddy to the knee and grinning about it. Most people sleep in the car. That is normal too.