I don't travel that much these days. Grad school really has its own a way of turning any ordinary tax-paying citizen into a hermit. But I will tell you one of the best highlights of living in Luzon for the past year, and that is being able to travel to the northern parts of the country.
So how did my adventure in Pulag start?
Like how all shenanigans do, it started with an invite. An old friend of mine way back in college invited me several months ago asking if I was interested in joining his group as they wanted to hike Mt. Pulag near the end of the year. Who was I with? Senior engineers all the way from Cebu, and two of the crew were my college batch mates.
When my old friend invited me on that trip— I, a person who has only been to hillside “hikes”, made the horrible mistake of thinking that the said hike would be somewhat similar.
This is how I thought the hike was going to be:
Yes. Figuratively, the hapi hapi hapi cat and snow white being the ambassador of nature
So...
When your friend markets you that the trail was considered “a celebrity trail” or “a trail that you can literally powder makeup on in between” please don’t believe them -- the Ambangeg trail, is popularly considered the easiest trail among the four major trails of Mt. Pulag. Even so, it still had its fair share of challenges. This post will serve somewhat of a survival guide especially from someone who just flung her way to her first major hike (ever):
When you’re advised to wear winter clothes on a hike especially somewhere in the highlands, please don’t skimp on winter clothes. Mt. Pulag is over 2.9 kilometers in elevation, especially since it’s in Benguet, wear insulation! For the record, my friends and I wore scarves, bonnets, earmuffs, two layers of clothing, gloves, and waterproof windbreakers.
Don’t forget safety gear and ACTUAL HIKING shoes, NOT YOUR ORDINARY RUBBER SHOES. Yes, there is a difference. It helps to do your footwear research ahead of time: since our hike started at 1 am in the morning (that’s what you do if you plan on reaching the summit by dawn ~5 am), we needed headlights to make sure we knew what we were stepping into. It was rainy season and a couple of days near an unanticipated tropical depression, so all the more when it came to navigating muddy and rocky terrain. I also asked about strap on shoes, with hiking soles, basically during the orientation (Yes there is an orientation), it was mentioned that as long as your feet will be comfortable wading through the mud and cold then wear slippers by all means. But if you’re like me with very sensitive extremities (toes, fingers and nose), it will help you not die if you’d wear thick socks and actual hiking shoes during the hike. Hiking sticks also help. There will be available sari-sari stores near the ranger stations that will let you rent these hiking sticks for a small fee.
Don’t make the mistake of buying hiking shoes that aren’t your size. I know people love cheap thrills, but in my case, it was sort of like cramming for an exam, I bought second hand shoes that were too tight for me, and upon hiking down from the summit, made me instantly regret my decision.
Bring extra clothes, socks, rain cover gear, water and sugary food. You’re going to need it.
Do not make the same mistake I did of buying all these essentials at the 11th hour, because by the virtue of economics and the law of supply-and-demand, the nearer you get to the starting point of the hike, the higher the prices of these items go up. You’ll most likely stop at Baguio before the hike, so buy all the essentials you need by then so you don’t need to spend that much later on.
Attend the DENR orientation. It’s crucial that you are well-oriented about it, and that you understand the safety guidelines being communicated early on. In my case, the whole Pulag hiking package cost me around PHP 4,200 and it already included the orientation, medical exam, van, guides and homestay the night before the hike. Some accommodation providers fetch you directly from your starting point, so if you're not from Luzon, the most likely places they're going to pick you up would be at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) or the Manila pier.
As I mentioned before, most hikers want that aesthetic, panoramic sea of clouds at the break of dawn on their social media. The way to reach that entails a bit of sacrifice. What hiking from the starting point to the summit through the Ambangeg trail lacks in inclination, it compensates in terms of distance. Reaching the summit usually takes 4-5 hours to complete, and another 4-5 hours to reach the starting point. So if you want to see dawn break from the summit, you have to start around 1 AM.
Lastly, when you do want to experience 'The Sea of Clouds' phenomenon, target the hike in between the early months of the year around February to March, compared to the ber months. Because to have the Sea of Clouds phenomenon, there should be higher chance of clearing, and to have higher chance of clearing, there should be more warm clear days than cloudy days.
About Mt. Pulag
Mt. Pulag is the third highest mountain in the Philippines and the highest mountain in Luzon. It also considered sacred by the Ibaloi living in that area, as historically, they've been using the mountain range as a burial place.
Mt. Pulag has four trails namely:
- Ambangeg (the most popular among beginners and what we picked)
- Akiki
- Tawangan trails from Benguet
- Ambaguio trail from Nueva Vizcaya
The interesting part about Mt. Pulag is that when you hike, you experience the three different ecosystems along the way:
- The Pine Forest, found at the lower elevations
- The Mossy Rainforest which exist between the pine forest and the summit, at elevations from approximately 1,500 to 2,600 meters
- And The Grasslands located at the summit of Mt. Pulag where the infamous 'Sea of Clouds' phenomenon take place
About Who I Was With
I was with a group of friends from the same company. Some of them I knew personally, and some of them I got the privilege to bond during the Benguet trip. All of them were design engineers from Cebu, with most coming from a slightly younger cohort (mid-20s), but nonetheless a real privilege to bond and connect with.
Because they were corporate employees, I was able to bond with them over life. My insatiable curiosity got the hold of me and I kept asking how life was in the corporate side of things. Take note that while I was a public school teacher, I also had my fair share of questions on what my life would be like if I returned to the corporate world and aligned my career path with what I finished. Then came the questions on graduate school, scholarships, and basically my adventures and misadventures, from here, there and everywhere.
I used to have this gnawing feeling at the back of my head that maybe I was making the wrong decision-- when I signed that contract from my 3rd year undergraduate years to work in the educational sector: was I signing my life away or was I selling the stability that my future self's mental health desperately needed?
But looking back at it, there was so much growth in the path I was in, and I don't think I could have developed these traits if I just followed what everyone else was doing.
The conversations I had with these people made me realize that not only does this capitalistic world tries to sell us goods, it also tries to sell us beliefs too. In my case, it is the beliefs in terms of calling:
Will XYZ, finally take away the heaviness, and dread of instability that I feel in my chest?
*XYZ = pursuing medicine, pursuing business, pursuing corporate life, pursuing graduate school, *pursuing this and that
And the easiest way to get someone to buy into those beliefs is to instill a preliminary belief of inadequacy (fear basically). While this pattern is mainly more pronounced around women and women-related products (e.g. Whitening products wouldn't sell that much in the Philippines if the women here didn't buy into the colonialist belief that lighter skin and mestiza features mean more beautiful), this can still be easily observed in other areas.
Couple that with type of systems we have in our country, then it's the best recipe for desperation-based beliefs to thrive, and desperation is good for business.
And it's so sad and ironic that my own country-- the Philippines-- my beloved Philippines is currently in its biggest corruption crisis yet-- and is the best example of buying into these beliefs which is the opposite of what I want. We still have so much to unpack and develop, including the ability for everyone in this country to think beyond themselves, their political colors, beyond personalities, and their egos.
This blog post is supposed to be a travel post, and while this is coming off as a rant that is personal, political, and philosophical by nature, I hope I am doing a bit of justice in the people reading this in how everything-- EVERYTHING-- connects.
About The Trail Itself
When we started the hike at 1:30 AM, I honestly just hoped that I wouldn't slip and fall. We were already oriented on how to cope with the different ecosystems in the trail: how the coldest section would be in the grasslands, how the most humid would be in the mossy rainforest section and what kind of flora and fauna we'd encounter along the way.
The other night it rained and it basically muddied the whole trail, and because I'm highly dependent on my glasses. It gets tiresome having to juggle between wiping it from time to time and making sure my nose doesn't fall off (I was covering half of my face with a scarf. Yes it was that cold).
The dark made me realize how important my headlight was. Even though I initially thought I didn't need it, my not so 20/20 vision and night-blindness humbled me and kept me grounded-- at times literally, as I slid and skid through the mud more than once.
As a result, I'm usually that one hiker in the back who becomes the "main responsibility" of the sweeper guide 😂. But I'm thankful for 'ate' and a couple of my newfound friends who didn't mind slowing down for me.
Then and there, I realized that I was living the metaphors and wise sayings I learned from church:
On friends: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together"
It was surely felt and looked this way when my younger, higher-testosterone friends treated the hike like an Olympic competition, while in the sweeper crew, all we did was talk about the 'how's and 'why's of life and existence.
On heavenly guidance: "Thy word is a lamp onto my feet and a light unto my path"
The word of God was a 'lamp'. It didn't say a the word of God was a blinding 'street light' nor didn't it lit up the significant part of the trail like a 'flashlight'.
It was a 'lamp'. When you are journeying life with heaven's guidance, you are not supposed to see the whole journey. Sometimes you only need to focus on what is being lit-- the current step.
Yes, yes. It sounds soooooo:
On Reaching The Summit and The Trail Down
On reaching the summit, the feeling of accomplishment I was supposed to have, was blanketed over the survival instincts that kicked in when I thought I was going to freeze in the cold.
One of my friends sacrificed their gloves and earlier, their headlight, and later on, their back because they saw me struggling. I eventually had to hide in the dwarf bamboo bushes so I wouldn't keep getting hit by the cold breeze, and guess who was there?
My other friends who went ahead first racing towards the peak at the start of the hike 😂. In the end, nature still outplays the human angst, and all of us snuggled together like freezing chicks waiting for their mother hen.
All of us waited for a clearing to finally obtain that most-pursued instagrammable sea-of-clouds shot, but after an hour of waiting, all of us realized that the chances for a clearing were much lower than we expected.
About Life In The In-Between
I could consider the hike to Mt. Pulag, an experiential allegory of life. The best part about it was the fact that I was forced to UNPLUG. There was no cellphone reception in that area so there really was no choice but to stay present in that moment with the people I was with.
Prior the trip, I was living in my own thoughts especially from a lot of heaviness from a feline panleukopenia virus (FPV) outbreak just weeks before claiming the lives of two of my cats. It's difficult when you're expected to keep the ball rolling when tragedy strikes, and it's even more difficult when you're surrounded by people who don't share the same beliefs: They don't feel and carry that same weight of love, responsibility and stewardship when it comes to animals as much as I do. And as a result, I crawled into this thick 12-inch-thick-lead-cladded echo chamber that is my own thoughts.
But while that experience was sobering and clarity-giving, it also served as a litmus-test of the conviction of a belief I want reflected in my life-- love, especially the Agape kind. Try really placing this kind of love the center of your life, and you'll see how it cuts open everything you knew about the world, about life, and yourself.
It's a difficult way to live. But it beats collapsing under the weight of everything you thought would save you.
But of course, that's just me and my wild and wicked ramblings running around during my first Pulag hike trying to make sense of life.
I wonder how yours will be.
I Couldn't Have Done It If It Weren't For These Meddling Frensss
ABOUT THE PROTEAN CREATOR
Roxanne Marie is a twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.
She has a background in chemical engineering, worked as a public school teacher, and currently, retrying her luck as a blogger with passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She loves open discourse, witty musings, discussions about abstract and tangible ideas, and any opportunity where she can insert memes into the conversation. She is doing her best to walk the way of love.
She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning, and openly discusses the ideas and thoughts that are born from her experiences here on Hive.
Currently, she is taking her Masters in UP Los Banos, Laguna, all the while documenting her misadventures, misfortunes, pagka-hugotera, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial.
If you like her content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. It would be an honor to have this post reblogged as well. Also, don't forget to follow her to be updated with her latest posts, and catch her next intellectual (and most of the time, untethered) rants.