Warrior Pilgrimage

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

IT IS FATHER'S DAY, June 21, 2009.

I am going up to Mount Babag today and I am alone.

Yeah, alone...

...again.

I have no problem walking alone. I find good therapy in the silence and I love the sound of my voice. I talk to myself. Yes, hum a song. Imitate a bird call. That's what you do when you're bored.

From my home, I rode a public jitney in the ...

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 September 21, 2009

THE TENTH DAY OF May 2009, Mother's Day to all mothers, found me again training with Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon along the trails in between Guadalupe and the Babag Mountain Range. We three just had a successful night navigation training on April 25, 2009 wherein we followed the Babag East Ridge Pass for the first time and stayed overnight at Manwel's Peak.

We three decided to go by that trail again, this ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on April 20, 2009

THE PROMISE OF CLIMBING again on February 8, 2009 on my favorite trail and training area in between Guadalupe and the Babag Mountain Range is always in the back of my mind. This mindset operate in clockwork unison with either Boy Toledo or Ernie Salomon, for whom this trail was named. It's either Mt. Babag or Mt. Babag and there are no other alternatives if endurance build-up training is concerned that is easy in your pocket ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on February 20, 2009

THE URGE TO SHED off the extra poundage I have accumulated in the short span of November 29, 2008 to January 3, 2009 pushed me to go backpacking again to the trails of Mount Babag on January 4. The food prepared on the eve of New Year's Day and after, I have eaten to my heart's delight like there was no tomorrow, were now taking its toll. Besides, I need to sweat out those firecracker smokes which I inadvertently inhaled ...