When my friends and I decided to climb Mt. Tambora, we didn’t expect to wind up assisting in a rescue.

Tambora is an active volcano on a large but fairly remote island in Indonesia named Sumbawa, usually summited in 3 days out & back: one day trekking through a jungle, one day for a summit attack and descent, and then the last day going back down. You lose cell signal two hours from the drop-off point.

On our way up, we ran into a distressed hiker coming down alone. He had summited with a friend named Nuril that morning, who had left for the campsite first. But when he came down after him, Nuril wasn’t there. After waiting for 3 hours, he decided to trek down through the night to get cell service and call for help, so he asked us to help keep an eye out for him.

Our guides told us that we were the only people on the mountain that day.

Turns out Nuril had fallen 10 meters down a small cliff, hitting his head and knocking him unconscious for most of that first day. He woke up and tried unsuccessfully to find the trail, then slept in the jungle when night fell. The next day, he was able to find his bearings and stumbled into our campsite with dried blood on his head.

I used a Bivy Stick to contact the ranger station, reporting where he was and his injuries, and later that evening a small team arrived to provide him with medical assistance. They joined us for the night, then took him down the mountain the next day.