Warrior Pilgrimage

Feature in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on May 8, 2010

WALKING, ACCORDING TO my good friend, Dr. Abe Manlawe, is the best exercise. It is most perfect when you walk 6-8 hours everyday. I could do that on weekends only. On the mountain trails of Napo to Mount Babag with a weight on my back. Yes. The sweat, oh, it streamed like a river, especially on a hot day. And I feel good after that. Go, ask Boy Toledo how he felt. You should see him scream with delight.

Seriously, ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on January 1, 2010

IT HAD BEEN A year already when I first climbed Mount Babag by way of Ernie's Trail, a steep and challenging route named after my climbing buddy – Ernie Salomon. That was on August 17, 2008. Since then I have climbed her twenty-three times alone or with a group. I aim to complete a full year cycle by climbing her again on August 23, 2009. This would be my twenty-fourth incursion there.

I brought two hawk feathers ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on December 8, 2009

AFTER AN ABSENCE OF more than a month, I am reunited again with Boy Toledo, of Ernie Salomon and, later, with Manwel Roble. Here we are again, maintaining our physical conditioning program walking the mountain trails of Napo to Mount Babag in the middle of an ongoing tropical depression! Just three has-beens so madly in love with these trails. The same three has-beens that would shame guys 25-30 years our junior in a test ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 16, 2009

MOUNT BABAG IS ALWAYS there and I have no excuses why I shouldn't go there. It's only 752 meters above sea level and eleven kilometers away from downtown Cebu City if you draw a straight line. It's just a pygmy if you consider it against other Philippine mountains and a molehill if you have Mount Everest in mind. Nevertheless, it is MY mountain and you would find me and others tackling her trails there every weekend. ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on August 17, 2009

INSPIRED BY MY SOLO trek in the dark on April 4, 2009, Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon decided to try night-trekking along the trails between Napo and the Babag Mountain Range. They are, to me, the finest specimens of our kind who walked with me and I know the level of their physical conditioning and I have confidence that both can tackle navigation in the night with such ease. I opted to use this activity as an experiment in ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on July 1, 2009

THE FORTHCOMING TRIP to Mount Talinis in Negros Oriental on April 3 to 6, 2009 goaded the Cebu Mountaineering Society to consider training at the trails of Napo and Mount Babag, here in Cebu City's own backyard which they scheduled on March 8, 15 and 29. They tapped me and Boy Toledo to do the honors of preparing the itinerary of the training climb.


“Good morning Philippines! Wake up!” These words screamed ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on May 25, 2009

IT HAD BEEN RAINING FOR three days and three nights and on the fourth day, today, February 15, 2009, which is a Sunday, left-over gray clouds from last night's were still on the horizon in the half-light of 5:00 AM as I waited for Boy Toledo near my home in M.J. Cuenco, Cebu City. Boy T's KIA Pride arrived minutes later and I hopped inside. Our destination - Guadalupe.

Again, as was last week, we heard a Holy ...