by Maria Eleanor E. Valeros, newmedia specialist
ZAMBALES, PHILIPPINES — Mountain savvy propelled me up Apo Namalyari’s abode on a pre-Valentine climb organized by TeamXplore – the 4th Viva-San Mig Lite Mt. Pinatubo Conquest and Camp-out.
The trekking began at the wastelands of Sitio Tarucan, Bagantungol in Capas, Tarlac — home of the Aetas.
I would say climbing has become the focus of my existence in the last 15 years, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Achieving the summit of every mountain becomes tangible, immutable, and concrete.
In every conquest, I find myself appreciating all the more the grip climbing has on my soul, or the purpose it is lending to my otherwise seemingly rudderless life. The pull, and call, and siren song of the heights were stronger than any other forces on earth. To borrow the immortal words of Jon Krakauer, journalist of a 1996 Everest expedition.
Mount Pinatubo, to me back then, was just a proper naming for the Gooney Bird presidential plane that crashed on Mount Manunggal in home province Cebu. Manunggal in Balamban witnessed that tragic end on March of 1957 to President Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay’s life and short-lived presidency.
However, when Pinatubo took the headlines in 1991 as an active volcano touching Zambales, Tarlac and Pampanga, waking up from its 600-year dormancy and burying towns in lahar. It began to sow, too, the seed of desire in me to come near her and imbibe her strength.
When Mount Pinatubo was opened to commercial trekking in 1998, I began salivating for that blessed chance to come close to its magnificent boulder gardens, awesome lahar mountain cathedrals, and enchanting burbling streams. I was in the grip of the Pinatubo mystique that I wanted to climb the mountain badly as I’d ever wanted nothing else in my life.
Fueled by the unwavering intensity of my desire to be there first before 49 other trekkers (connoisseurs of geologic form, as many professional mountaineers would call), I was able to cut down my walking time to an hour and 15 minutes of the two-hour target.
During the camp-out, the Aetas danced before the bonfire and offered chants to Apo Namalyari for abundance of harvest. At 11 pm when everyone was in their deep slumber, I immersed myself into the wasteland’s cold phantasmagorial beauty beneath the night sky that was beautifully smeared with stars, upon which a harvest moon illumined the heavens and washed a shimmering scimitar of sand carpeting the Crow Valley lahar flats of Capas.
My heart belongs to climbing. True that climbing provides most of what’s been missing on civvy street – the challenge, the camaraderie, the sense of mission.#
TRAVELEANORISM 