Saturday, August 22, 2009

Pico de Loro 2009

Ternate, Cavite
Minor Climb

Climb # 09

Day 1
- meet-up in Baclaran
- Mini-Bus to Ternate, provide additional fee since they will unload us directly at DENR
- Register at DENR
- Start trek
- ETA basecamp
- dinner and socials
Since we started Night Trek, we also experience difficulties due to heavy rain. We decided to set-up in Base camp. We used the unoccupied Kubo and set-up our tent inside. Luckily we are still lucky.. hehe. We were comfortable inside the nipa hut and enjoyed our drinking socials

Day 2
1. breakfast





2. ETA summit.












This is another frightening experience, due continuous heavy rain; we descend from the summit in crawling & sliding manner. Sometimes, I never imagine that even when were in a situation of life-threatening, we still enjoyed the sliding moment. Thanks to God for keeping us safe.
3. Side trip - waterfall















4. ETA kubo and have a quick lunch
5. descend to DENR
We started our descend late and experience being lost. We missed a sign and continue our walk straight forward. We were alarmed that we are being lost when we felt an eerie atmosphere once we get ahead of a tunnel full of vines (we recall if we pass the same vine before but we haven’t). We head backward and try to find our way out. We started to argue regarding the path, and decided to find a way directly to the road since we cannot remember the right trail. Our head lamp failed again so we were blinded by darkness- 1 flash light in front, 1 in the middle and 1 at the back. And then we have to walk in pair. Darkness, rain and being lost – I’ll never forget that frightening moment. We’ve been praying to reach the road despite the fact that we’re crawling darkness. We are thankful when we reached the road (in any possible way) and proceed our path to DENR. The security was considerate to accept us. We wash-up and they sent us free to Main road were we can take a ride back to Manila using their own truck. One of our member mentioned seeing a dwarf castle in the middle of the forest will be try to find our way - a delusion or true-life?

Lesson learned. Before we ascend, descend or start our walk, always have time to pray and ask for guidance, safety and protection to our Father above. We learned that we forgot to do this in this climb. We were overconfident that we can do this climb even we started our trek at a rainy night. We were again overconfident since we already experienced night trek on previous climb. Being lost in the darkness teaches us to be humble and ask for HIS guidance and protection.