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Puncak Jaya (; literally "Victorious Peak", Amung people: Nemangkawi Ninggok) or Carstensz Pyramid (, , ) on the island of New Guinea, with an elevation of , is the highest mountain peak of an island on Earth, and the highest peak in Indonesia and within Oceania. The mountain is located in the Sudirman Range of the highlands of Mimika Regency, Central Papua, Indonesia. Puncak Jaya is ranked 5th in the world by topographic isolation.
When regarding New Guinea as part of the Australian continent in a biogeographical sense, Puncak Jaya can be considered the highest peak in all of Oceania, with its elevation exceeding those of the highest peaks in the nearby nations of Papua New Guinea (Mount Wilhelm), New Zealand (Aoraki / Mount Cook) and Australia (Mount Kosciuszko). Puncak Jaya is therefore often listed as one of the Seven Summits. However, since Puncak Jaya is in Western New Guinea, an area administered by Indonesia and therefore geopolitically part of Southeast Asia, the peak can also be considered the 8th highest mountain in this region, after Hkakabo Razi and six others in Kachin State, Myanmar.
The massive, open cut Grasberg mine gold and copper mine, the world's second-largest gold mine, is west of Puncak Jaya.
Other summits are Carstensz East (), Sumantri () and Ngga Pulu (). Other names include Nemangkawi in the Amung language language, Carstensz Toppen and Gunung Soekarno.Greater Atlas of the World, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1986. It is also the highest point between the Himalayas and the Andes.
The snowfield of Puncak Trikora, east of here, was reached as early as 1909 by a Dutch explorer, Hendrik Albert Lorentz with six of his Dayak people Kenyah people porters recruited from the Apo Kayan in Borneo.Lorentz, H.A., 1910. Zwarte Menschen – Witte Bergen: Verhaal van den Tocht naar het Sneeuwgebergte van Nieuw-Guinea, Leiden: Brill Publishers The predecessor of the Lorentz National Park, which encompasses the Carstensz Range, was established in 1919 following the report of this expedition.
The glacier on Puncak Trikora in the Maoke Mountains disappeared completely some time between 1939 and 1962. Since the 1970s, evidence from satellite imagery indicates the Puncak Jaya glaciers have been retreating rapidly. The Meren Glacier melted away sometime between 1994 and 2000.
An expedition led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson in 2010 found that the glaciers are disappearing at a rate of thickness per year and in 2018 they were predicted to vanish in the 2020s.
The standard route to climb the peak from its base camp is up the north face and along the summit ridge, which is all hard rock surface. Despite the large Grasberg mine, the area is highly inaccessible to hikers and the general public. The standard route to access base camp as of 2013 is to fly into the nearest major town with an airport, Timika, and then take a small aircraft over the mountain range and onto an unimproved runway at one of the local villages far down from the peak. It is then typically a five-day hike via the Jungle route to the base camp through very dense rainforest and with regular rainfall, making the approach probably the "most miserable" of the Seven Summits. Rain during most days of the hike inbound and out are not uncommon. Unlike the other Seven Summits, if one sustains an injury on the inbound hike, there is little or no ability to get rescued via helicopter. Anyone injured must evacuate by foot over very difficult and slippery terrain.
The descent from the peak's base camp can take three to four days. Anecdotally, it appears most injuries occur during the descent due to a combination of exhaustion and difficulty controlling hiking speed on the wet and slippery terrain.
An additional complication is relatively common work strikes by the climbing porters that accompany most expeditions, occasionally halting their work to demand (and usually receive) higher pay before agreeing to continue. The one-day summit bid is technically challenging for those with little rock climbing experience, and it can be quite cold with temperatures at or below freezing near the summit. Patches of snow sometimes appear on the route up or on the ropes of the Tyrolean traverse just below the summit.
The now-highest Carstensz Pyramid summit was not climbed until 1962, by an expedition led by the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, New Zealand mountaineer Philip Temple, Australian rock climber Russell Kippax, and Dutch patrol officer Albertus (Bert) Huizenga. Temple had previously led an expedition into the area and pioneered the access route to the mountains.
When Indonesia took control of the province in 1963, the peak was renamed Poentja' Soekarno (Simplified Indonesian: Puncak Sukarno) or Sukarno Peak, after the then-President of Indonesia Sukarno; later this was changed to Puncak Jaya due to the subsequent de-Sukarnoization. Puncak means peak or mountain and Jaya means 'victory', 'victorious', or 'glorious'. The name Carstensz Pyramid is still used among mountaineering. (2025). 9780814410844, American Management Association. ISBN 9780814410844
In 2017, Ahmad Hadi died of hypoxemia while climbing the peak.
In the 2024 climbing season, two climbers died while attempting the summit. The first died of a suspected heart attack on 29 September. The second climber, Chinese mountaineer Dong Fei died of a fall while on the descent.
In 2025, Lilie Wijayati Poegiono and Elsa Laksono died of hypothermia while descending the summit after being trapped in extreme weather.
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