The Sleeping Giant

 

The old-timers in the villages surrounding Mount Gede had a saying: mountains don’t sleep—they wait. On April Fool’s Day, 2025, the mountain decided its waiting game had gone on long enough.

Forty-nine volcanic earthquakes in a single goddamn day. That’s what the boys and girls at the Geological Agency recorded while the rest of the world was busy with practical jokes and plastic vomit. The mountain was laughing too, in its own way—a deep, subterranean chuckle that vibrated through bedrock and soil.

Agus Deni—public relations man for Mount Gede Pangrango National Park, a fellow with tired eyes and a perpetual coffee stain on his left shirt pocket—stood before the reporters on April 6th and tried his best to sound optimistic. “Over the last five days, seismic activity has continued to decrease,” he said, the words rehearsed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a fishing lure. “Until now, we have not received any reports regarding volcanic earthquake activity at Mount Gede.”

The reporters nodded and scribbled. The cameras flashed. But nobody—not Agus, not the reporters, hell, not even the bigwigs at the Geological Agency—could shake the feeling that the mountain was just taking a breather. Like a boxer between rounds, toweling off before the next punishing combination.

You see, mountains have patience. Especially the ones with fire in their bellies.

The data didn’t lie. Something was moving down there in the darkness—magma, maybe, or volcanic fluids, slithering through ancient chambers like blood through veins. By April 2nd, the frequency of those tremors had dropped, but anyone who’s lived through a Dakota winter knows that the stillest nights are often the coldest.

The Geological Agency kept watching. Visual methods. Instrumental methods. Eyes on screens and boots on the ground. Because when a mountain like Gede starts to stretch and yawn, you damn well pay attention.

The national park went from being open to being closed faster than a small-town dive bar after a brawl. First till April 3rd. Then April 7th. Then pushed back again to April 13th. The deeper, volcanic quakes kept coming—forty-seven of them between the 1st and the 3rd, like a slow, deliberate heartbeat.

From the Wadon Crater—a name that sounds like it was pulled straight from some eldritch text—smoke rose 100 meters into the air. Not the cheerful campfire kind of smoke, mind you, but the thick, ominous stuff that makes birds change direction mid-flight.

Despite all this, Mount Gede maintained its Level I “Normal” status. Normal. Like the quiet kid in high school who nobody notices until something terrible happens and then everyone says, “He seemed so normal.” The authorities still established a 600-meter exclusion zone around the Wadon Crater, where toxic volcanic gases pooled and swirled like unseen specters.

Mount Gede wasn’t born yesterday. Hell, it wasn’t even born a million yesterdays ago. It’s ancient, with recorded volcanic tantrums dating back to the 16th century. The Dutch—those enterprising colonialists with their clipboards and pith helmets—were so taken with the area they established the Cibodas Nature Reserve back in 1889. Study the monster, catalog its habits, pretend you understand it.

The ancient Sundanese knew better. In their 15th-century manuscript, Bujangga Manik, they called it “Bukit Ageung”—the highest place in Pakuan. Sacred. Powerful. Not to be trifled with.

Today’s tourists come for the attractions—Suryakencana Square, Queen Crater, Lanang Crater. They snap their photos and buy their T-shirts. They hike the tropical rainforests, point at the edelweiss flowers, and try to spot a Javan lutung in the canopy. They climb routes with names like Cibodas, Gunung Putri, and Selabintana, each promising its own unique flavor of challenge and breathtaking vista.

What they don’t see—or choose not to see—is the sleeping giant beneath their boots. A stratovolcano, the geologists call it. Part of the Sunda volcanic arc, formed by one tectonic plate forcing itself beneath another in a slow-motion wrestling match that’s been going on longer than mankind has walked upright.

Mount Gede isn’t alone, either. It’s got a twin—Mount Pangrango—hulking to the west and north like a silent sentinel. Together, they form a complex that dominates the landscape and the nightmares of disaster management experts.

Stratovolcanoes aren’t your garden variety hill-with-a-hole. They’re steep, conical mountains built from layers of lava, ash, and other volcanic debris, like a geological layer cake baked in hell’s kitchen. These mountains have a nasty habit of trapping gas in viscous magma, building pressure until something gives. When they blow, they don’t whisper—they scream.

Seven distinct summit craters crown Mount Gede—Baru, Gumuruh, Lanang, Kawah Leutik, Ratu, Sela, and Wadon. Seven mouths that have tasted fire. Seven throats that have roared across the centuries.

A study from Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences published back in January didn’t mince words. Mount Gede sits like a loaded gun pointed at one of the largest urban populations you can imagine—the entire sprawling mass of Jakarta falls within its 100-kilometer killing radius. Bandung, not to be outdone, has over 8 million souls living within spitting distance of twelve volcanoes, Gede among them.

Jenkins and his team of eggheads identified Gede-Pangrango as a high-exposure volcano back in ‘22. You’ve got to wonder if anyone was listening.

The mountain has a rap sheet longer than most career criminals. From 1747 to its last known eruption—March 13, 1957—it’s been caught red-handed time and again, with intervals ranging from a single year to a 71-year silent treatment.

That ‘57 eruption was a doozy—rumbling sounds that made farmers look up from their fields, followed by an ash column that punched three kilometers into the sky. Volcanologists gave it a VEI of 2—Volcanic Explosivity Index, a scale that goes from 0 to 8, with each number representing a tenfold increase in explosive power. A VEI 2 is enough to ruin your weekend. A VEI 8 is an extinction-level event.

Most of Gede’s tantrums have been in the small to moderate range, but the mountain proved in 1840 that it could really throw down when it wanted to. That eruption—the granddaddy of them all—produced pyroclastic flows, superheated avalanches of gas, ash, and rock that can travel faster than a speeding car and cook anything in their path.

August 29, 1832—after 71 years of playing possum, the mountain roared back to life. The eruption column was visible all the way from Bogor. By noon, ash was falling heavy, drifting westward on the wind, a thin gray shroud settling over Jakarta like dandruff on a black suit.

But ‘40 was worse. December 11, 2 p.m. local time. Paroxysmal eruption, the scientists call it. A fancy term for when a volcano loses its shit completely. Rumbling sounds at 6 a.m., an eruption column 200 meters above the summit, and then—curtain time. The real show began, ending with ash drifting down like toxic snow.

Sometimes, the mountain’s temper tantrums have consequences beyond the obvious. In 1843, a small eruption dusted Cianjur and Cicurug in Sukabumi with ash. A few months later, on February 15, 1844, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake ripped through Cianjur, killing God-knows-how-many and flattening hundreds of buildings.

The Dutch colonials—practical men with little patience for living on shaky ground—eventually said “to hell with this” and moved the center of the Priangan Residency from Cianjur to Bandung. Governor-General Charles Ferdinand Pahud made the call in 1856, and by 1864, it was a done deal.

Mount Gede woke again in ‘54—November 12, 3 a.m., the hour when the veil between worlds is thinnest, when hospitals record the most deaths, when the mind is most vulnerable to dark suggestions. Earthquake. Rumbling. A 50-meter fire fountain dancing above the crater like a demonic maypole. Volcanic bombs—red-hot chunks of rock—arcing through the night sky. Ash drifting toward Bogor like a promise of things to come.

The last time Gede cleared its throat was from the Queen Crater on March 13, 1957. The eruption column stretched three kilometers above the crater, beginning its ascent at 7 p.m., reaching upward like a titan’s fist raised against the darkening sky.

Since then? Earthquake swarms in ‘91. Again in ‘98. Tremors that made seismographs scratch jagged lines on paper, but never quite culminated in the main event. Like the mountain was testing the waters. Or maybe just reminding everyone that it was still there. Still waiting.

And now, in the cool early days of April 2025, Mount Gede is stirring again. The instruments are picking up its whispers. The experts are watching their screens with tired, worried eyes.

The old-timers in the villages have a saying: mountains don’t sleep—they wait.

And sometimes, the waiting ends.