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 name of the mountain in the indigenous Amungme peoples' language is Nemangkawi Ninggok meaning Peak of the White Arrow.

Puncak Jaya was named "Carstensz Pyramid" after Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon, who was the first European to sight the glaciers on the peak of the mountain on a rare clear day in 1623.

[5] The snowfield of Puncak Trikora, 170 km (106 mi) east of here, was reached as early as 1909 by a Dutch explorer, Hendrik Albert Lorentz with six of his Dayak Kenyah porters recruited from the Apo Kayan in Borneo.

However, analysis of the extent of these rare equatorial glaciers from historical records show significant retreat since the 1850s, around the time of the Little Ice Age Maximum which primarily affected the Northern Hemisphere, indicating a regional warming of around 0.6 °C (1.1 °F) per century between 1850 and 1972.

[9] An expedition led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson in 2010 found that the glaciers are disappearing at a rate of seven metres (23 ft) 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.

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.

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.

[15] 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.

[18] Despite being among the lowest of the Seven Summits, Puncak Jaya is considered to be a technically difficult climb, requiring extensive planning, acclimatisation, mountaineering skills, and support services, due to its remoteness and sheer limestone faces.