Extreme Walling Experience

With barely an hour nap to keep me going, I met up with Analyn Aujero and her companion, JV at Coastal Mall for the three of us to join Stephen Dayandayan in a car pool in the nearby Caltex Gasoline Station.

We took a wrong turn (courtesy of yours truly) at SM Bacoor that took us to the two-hour ride of road tripping along the narrow streets of Imus. It was past 4pm when we finally got to the destination. Thank God, the couple, Cel and Carlo, were patient enough to wait for us at the mall. 

 The first thing that I noticed and got me nervous is that the floor didn't have crash pads on it! The next thing I learned that made me even more nervous is the fact that the belaying system is manual (I was used to the automatic ones at Market Market). Anyways, I wanted to make use of the fact that we were already there, so we better pushed through with the plan, no matter how scary it turned out to be. 

John, the climb instructor, was super nice. He took time and patience in teaching us the basics. The owner volunteered to be my belayer on almost all my climbs. He was patient in giving me crash courses in knot-tying. I mean, I had basic learning from MCG, but it had been a while since I tied some knots. Oh well, I didn't do so badly when I did a figure of 8 follow through. 

The holds were color coded, signifying the routes that a climber should take with their corresponding level of difficulty. I first tried the yellow route [5.7] then the blue route [5.8]. I had a failed attempt on the green route [5.10] and ended up following the red route [5.9], instead. The red route got me super flexible as it made me do an almost-full-split move just to get to the next hold. Talk about indoor extreme adventure! 

We had so much fun that we didn't want to end the night just yet, so we headed for Water Village Grill to have ourselves cold bottles of beer. Some intellectually-stimulating conversation took place even before the beer was served. It was then that I realized I was in good company that I would want to have regular sessions with... What a nice day to spend a stormy day!!!

Climb 035: Pico for the Nth Time

Akyat Para sa Kalayaan

with KM23 Cavite Adventure Group

DESTINATION: Pico de Loro 644 MASL

JUMP-OFF POINT: Magnetic Hill, Ternate, Cavite

SPECS: Minor Climb, Difficulty 3/9, Trail class 1-3

CLIMB DATES: June 8-9, 2013

When KM23 Cavite Adventure Group invited me to join them in the Akyat para sa Kalayaan 2013 in Pico de Loro, I invited my old climb buddy, Jason Lloyd Ng, to join me. He has not yet been to Pico de Loro and I thought that it was high time that he set foot on in.

We met up at Baclaran around 7am, had breakfast, rode a bus to Ternate around 8am, got to the DENR jump-off point at 10am. We started trekking around 11am and got to Mang Rey's just before lunch.

We set up the tent and prepared ourselves for the summit assault. We started trekking past 2pm and got to Camp 2 around 4pm. We stayed at the camp site, had Mountain Dew for refreshment. We climbed to the summit around 5pm and climbed to the Parrot's Beak. We stayed at the beak until sunset. When we went down, it was raining hard and we took the wrong turn and had to backtrail after 20 minutes.  Good thing the sun was still up even though it was already past 6pm.

We got to the campsite past 7pm. We had dinner amid the heavy downpour. We had socials amid the heavy pouring of rain. I was asked to stay the the kubo where everyone was drinking rum. I had a few shots of the liquor myself. And because I had been awake for 36 hours, I dozed off in the middle of a noisy crowd, would wake up once in a while from Piotr Śliwakowski, a Polish guest, who got so amazed at how I could get sleep despite that fact.

The socials went on for hours, and our tent was said to have been flooded by the great rainfall. Lloydie had to check and dried it up for us to be able to sleep in it. I didn't want to go back and sleep there. I had a dried space from where I had been dozing off for hours now. The space was uncomfortable, though as I had my feet dangling and my back arched.

So i had no choice that even though I hate sleeping with any of my body parts wet, I had to. Waking up was surprisingly pleasant. Probably because I was in my beloved home mountain. We started cleaning up the area before climbing down. By noon, we were already at the exit point, and by 2pm, we were back in Baclaran, where Lloydie and I had lunch.