This is my first time to lead a climb. I am so proud of myself!
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Since all the guys are in Bicol for the Araw ng Kagitingan weekend holiday, it was the perfect day to embark on our secret-just-us-girls climb. With Rozza, Jean, Mona and Eden, I went back to the charming Batulao; this time with no extra hands to keep me steady or the assurance that someone would catch me if I happen to slip and fell of a cliff. More importantly, I am the one responsible for this climb. I even got to have a whistle!.we could not feel the harshness of the summer heat. We planned to take the old trail and back, because that was the trail we know but since we met some climbers that vouched for the new trail to be easier, we ended up taking it. Mona reasoned so that we will have something new to tell them. It did seem relatively easy but before long, I started wishing for the shade that trees on the old trail offered. At the new trail, there are no time for stops except for the designated camps, you just have to keep on walking. If there is a Batulao Old Trail facebook page, I want to become a fan. There was a time when we felt like action stars because we were clutching at the rocks on the side of the mountain to keep us steady, since at the other side is a cliff that would take a lot of tumbling down before you reach the bottom. And before we knew it(literally, we really did not know) we had reached the summit. I did not recognized it because there was no shed selling softdrinks at the summit the last time I was there. Also, it was marked camp 10, I honestly heard the lady at camp 7 say that the new trail is up to camp 12, so I was looking forward for camp 11 and 12. But no, camps 11 and 12 does not exist in Batulao, may be in some other mountain. Also I was looking out for the boulder that the team climbed the last time we were there, it turned out to be the group of rocks we had our photo session on. No wonder that tile with an image of Flight to Egypt looked familiar to me. Good thing someone asked where the summit is and Manong, obviously amused, told us that we are right on it. Since we became nostalgic for the old trail, we decided to traverse and go down using it. I forgot that I hated the trail going down from camp 9 to 7. I still can not believe how I survived it the first time considering it was already dark when we went down from the summit. I guess its true, ignorance is bliss. If you are not aware of the cliff that is dangerously close to your path (path? more like rolling rocks), then there is no reason to be afraid. Camp 7 does not look too far from summit, I think it took us a good 20 minutes to reach it. Or maybe it just seemed longer because it was so uncomfortable. Not to mention the heat, it was then past 12 and the stones felt like frying pans on our hands. We joked that we would be having fried palm coated with dust for lunch. That's another thing, we looked like chocolate espasol. We were covered with a thick layer of dust, even our arms and legs considering we were wearing long sleeves and pants. I don't remember being this dirty last time around, because if we were and we slept without cleaning up, then eww. Seriously, I used five wet tissues on my hands yet I could still see dust clogging my pores. But it is clean enough to eat lunch, after all when you are out there in the wilderness, you can't be too squeamish with things like cleanliness. We had lunch at camp 6, where we held camp before. There used to be a small patch of grass under the shade but instead we got more dust, but of course that did not stop us from resting our backs and lying on it. Rozza took a nap on a tree trunk that serves the purposes of a couch in a civilized home. It amaze me how my sister could just sleep anywhere. I need to learn that skill. About 2pm we started our descent. Everyone agreed that the old trail is easier, especially Eden, who is a first-timer. She said that this kind of trail was what she expected and not the death-defying thing we did earlier. Still, we had more stops because when we weren't walking under the shade, the heat is so intense. Plus there are more opportunities to rest and we were confident that we would reach the start-off point by sundown, so there is no point in rushing. By 4pm we had reached the houses near the jump-off and had caught up with the group of mountaineers that urged us to take the new trail. I am so proud of my newly developed social easiness with other climbers, even if they are complete strangers and we have nothing in common except that we walked the same path as they did. We also had the best iced-candy I ever had, which Manong kindly got from another house just because I asked for it. Mountaineering lets me witness how nice and accommodating strangers can be. I thought our pace was so slow because we were two hours behind the itinerary we were following(which we did not really follow it because it was the itinerary for the old trail) but they reminded me that this is a no time pressure climb and just think, if Mona brought her camera we would be delayed a lot later. What matter is that all of us are still walking.
Around 5:30, we were ready to go back to Manila. I just lead a climb and we all got down safe and alive! Snaps!
