Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in Blogspot on September 23, 2011

IT WILL BE A SUPER hot day today. This is a Friday, April 9, 2011, the anniversary of the Fall of Bataan. I will not be commemorating our heroes today but I will facilitate a training program for a supercharged group of mountain climbers preparing for a Lenten climb to Mount Pulag in Benguet.

The route will be one-half of the Freedom Trail, the full stretch of Kilat Trail, a part of Lensa Trail and the remaining arc of Bebut's Trail. These trails will conspire today to give optimum adrenaline rush for thirteen members from Tribu Dumagsa led by the couple Randell and Marjorie Savior.

Last Sunday, April 3, Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon of Camp Red led the Tribu Dumagsa climbers to a gruelling endurance training to Mount Babag via the difficult Ernie's Trail and back to Guadalupe by way of the No-Santol-Tree Trail. This time, I will lead the whole group, including Boy T and Ernie and the two neophytes from Camp Red.

I designed the route and I will lay emphasis today on speed and some bushcraft sense like basic navigation. Two of these trails are incomplete and need some more exploration. It will be as it may – unexplored – to give accent to the activity and to perk up the participants' interest. Along the way, I will explain to the backpackers the origin of such place names...READ MORE (Press CTRL + mouse click)