Ripus Merapi, left, and Merbabu

Have you bagged all the munros; got every corbett under your boots?

Well, here’s a new challenge for baggers: the ribus. Compiled by two expatriates living in Indonesia, the new list details all the mountains and volcanoes in their adopted country with a prominence of 1,000m or more. The Gunung Bagging website will be officially launched a week tomorrow, Saturday 12 December with a party at Eastern Promise, Kemang Raya, Jakarta.

The brainchild of Andy Dean and Daniel Quinn, the Gunung Bagging list of ‘ribus’ – the word ribu means a thousand in Indonesian – contains 172 peaks, ranging from the Carstensz Pyramid, Puncak Jaya, with 4,884m elevation and prominence in Papua, to the 1,022m Tombia in Sulawesi Tengah.

The pair have used the same shuttle radar topography mission height data used in our own grough route system to determine the heights of the peaks.

The website also shows the peaks’ locations using Google Maps.

Dan Quinn said of the project: “It is hoped that the list of peaks and the website will encourage hikers, whether Indonesian, expatriate or backpacker, to explore this amazing country in more detail and visit incredible areas as yet largely unexplored.

“The variety of the ribus is huge – some are easy and well-known day-hikes near large cities; others are in remote and challenging forest environments requiring weeks of hiking to reach; some are active and dangerous volcanoes. The ribus stretch across the Indonesian archipelago from Aceh in the west to Papua in the east.”

The English teacher and music composer hopes to be the first person to bag 100 ribus.

Merapi, seen from Merbabu

He met Andy Dean, a geographical information systems and remote sensing scientist on a hike to climb Gunung Lawu in East Java.

The website also includes hiking tips, photographs and route descriptions, and people are invited to post comments about each peak. It is expected that an Indonesian-language version will be launched sometime in 2010.

The duo say anyone is welcome to the launch party, which takes place at 3pm.