DESTINATION: Mt. Cristobal a.k.a. The Devil's Mountain 1,415 MASL
ENTRY POINT: Sitio Parang, Brgy. Sta. Lucia, Dolores
EXIT POINT: Brgy. Tala, Rizal, Laguna
SPECS: Major climb, Difficulty 6/9, Trail class 3-4
CLIMB DATES: August 28-29, 2010
Five times that I have planned to climb the mountain I was most mystified in... Even with my eldest sister bashing me from climbing Pico in the midst of a crisis, I still left and climbed Cristobal. Despite my mom and my other siblings' persistence that I should engage in gardening instead. I don't know. I just can't let this climb pass me by.
I'm getting used to being the only "rose" among the thorns. Tommy wasn't aware that it was going to be a traverse. Doing the climb the traverse way is making the trail's difficulty level higher by two points. From difficulty level: 4/9, it becomes 6/9.
The way up was just like the Tarak climb. Easy at some points, and almost impossible at some. There was a "face the wall" portion wherein one had to face the wall in order to cross that very narrow path that can only accommodate half the body. There's the "lambitin" portion wherein one has to hang on to a tree or choose the easier way. Melle and I chose the more difficult choice.
There were three or more groups who climbed with us. One of them had 30 climbers with them, most of whom were newbies. We requested to advance from them but they won't let us. Later, I learned why. The camp site wasn't that big to accommodate all of us, so they had to trick us to get the better area. Shame on them to use such a sneaky way!
We had a faster pace than the rest of the group and we really made it a point to go faster for us to be able to get a good spot for camping. Well, our groupmates arrived a little later than we expected and they went looking for us as we went looking for them and it took a while before we found one another.
They were pissed off, having had to go through the 30 minutes of waist-bending on the "talahiban." They did so twice. We did so 6 times. But we didn't complain and they did. Well, we were in it for the sacrifice. As one climber puts it: "Mountaineering is the art of suffering." I agree.
Everything went well, but we had to leave the tent we pitched at the peak to join the rest on the other side. We left them early morning the next day to break camp and wait for them at our camp site for the descent. It took them 3 hours to get there. We thought they'd be there a few minutes after we left their camp site. Still, we didn't bulge.
I call the first few minutes of the traverse "the athletics portion." Wilson, Tommy, Bert, Khen, and Jay took turns in assuming a diving position, butterfly position, and other awkward positions due to countless falls. Minor injuries were common. I fell on my butt twice myself. The trail down was 80% steep and it was slippery and muddy.
We got lost many times, especially in the grassland. That's when the distance between us and other groupmates really heightened. They were late for 3 hours to get to our exit point.
We came in contact with the Pinoy Trekkers and joined them for the swimming galore in a resort near the exit point. Since it took a while before our groupmates arrived, we had to wait for them at the bus ride.
We knew that on their way to the exit point, they'd be bashing us for having left them, and we were not mistaken. There was hostility when we met at the bus stop.
Not that I am bitter about them calling us "ataters," it's just that I feel bad having them feel bad about us having a different pace than them. I was expecting them to respect our pacing as much as we had respected theirs. They shouldn't have used it against us. They were as lost we also were. They were on a better state because they had the food with them, they were all males, and they had another group joining them.
Well, that's just it. Some peeps would get messed up in the head when things go wrong. People tend to look for someone to blame.
I was somehow relieved to have fixed things with them before the climb ended. The nasty talks after do not matter. "We should be mature about it and we should not hold negative feelings about a climb." I agree, Omee; I totally agree."
No comments:
Post a Comment