MOUNTAINEERING DAYS
The Preparation
My former boss, Betty Nelle at the Department of Tourism had one very good policy when it came to our projects like tourism product research: If its your project, you must get into it. It was that policy that I am forever grateful to her and to DOT as it opened up exciting adventures in my life. I became a mountaineer. Actually, I was not the project officer for the mountaineering project. Luckily for me, my colleague who used to handle the project resigned to pursue his Capricornian dream. For those who don’t understand my last statement, try to analyze somebody who is a Capricorn and you will immediately know what I mean.
Common sense told me that before I could even become a neophyte mountaineer, I must prepare. I had two months before a major climb to be held in the wilderness of the Sierra Madre. I had a friend who became my fitness trainer, Arnold, a jolly man who’s into a religious group and some form of martial arts. The DOT building had a gym complete with all types of weights and some sets of treadmills. An occasional entertainment came in the form of sharing the gym with aerobics ladies. I thought that a nightly pump-up would change me into something better. Okay, I admit, some sort of a macho man ready to face the challenges of nature. But try to imagine this – I was a guy with a waistline of 28 inches. Arnold made me pump serious weights, stretched me, push ups of all kinds, modified pull-ups. He made me work! He made me work real hard! Sometimes, at the end of a session, I threw up. Two hours in the gym and 30 minutes in the comfort room, that was a familiar night for me. After a month of the regimen, I knew that I was ready. I called up a mountaineer and asked if I could join their Matulid River activity. The answer was a resoundingly flat “NO.”… The reason? I was not a mountaineer! It took me almost an hour begging him to let me join. I told him I’d hire a porter, bring my own food, even bring a super kalan just so I could join them. “No.”
So I was back to my daily regimen lifting weights, tread milling, stretching, and sometimes throwing up while at the same time trying to find ways to link up with a mountaineering group and finally get a taste of my first mountain. Then after about two months of the Matulid fiasco, I got a call from Ping Arcilla of the DOT Region V office in Legaspi City. They were organizing a climb to Mt. Mayon. I asked myself, am I really destined to have Mt. Mayon as my first mountain?
Back in the early 90’s, mountaineering was an odd sport. Only a few, seemingly macho men and women dared go into this intimidating recreation. The public notion then was, who in his right mind would carry 15 – 20 kilos of food, clothing and equipment, climb up a mountain for two days, and then go down anyway? Nobody had the answer but the mountaineers themselves.
The mountaineering equipment and gear then were considered rare and precious items. Lucky was he who can find and actually buy an authentic, usually U.S.-made mountaineering gear. It took me almost a month finding those items one by one. So I got an A-frame tent with wooden poles and without any rain fly, a sleeping bag, a backpack made by a Filipino mountaineer, and my only imported gear – a Hi-tec trekking shoes with the where made label torn out (up to now, I suspect that it was made in one of the export processing zones in R.P.)
A guy fully donned in those gears was considered a curious attraction in Manila’s streets. Ordinary people would suddenly stop and involuntarily stare at this person with huge shoes, bandana, dog tags and a colorful backpack that seemed like a sack of rice. Sometimes, tambays who see a passing mountaineer on his way to a climb would sing out loud the famous song of the Ghost Busters (that movie trio who were armed with backpack generators and zapped ghosts). Sometimes, guards stationed at the mall centers would not let mountaineers in fearing that they carried cannons! (They were joking… of course) I remember one time when there were five of us who came from a hiking activity and we were at EDSA waiting for a ride back home. We saw the right bus and started running towards it. Then I saw their faces. The people in the street suddenly split like an ocean (please forgive me for quoting sometimes from the Bible) and the mass of people opened up to what seemed like a wide avenue for us. Then it dawned on me. There we were, five big guys with big packs making big strides and creating huge noise as we ran. The people must have been afraid that we would ram them down. Or worse, they must have thought that we would trip and roll over them. What fear they must have had. As I looked into their eyes, the black portion seemed to disappear.
My former boss, Betty Nelle at the Department of Tourism had one very good policy when it came to our projects like tourism product research: If its your project, you must get into it. It was that policy that I am forever grateful to her and to DOT as it opened up exciting adventures in my life. I became a mountaineer. Actually, I was not the project officer for the mountaineering project. Luckily for me, my colleague who used to handle the project resigned to pursue his Capricornian dream. For those who don’t understand my last statement, try to analyze somebody who is a Capricorn and you will immediately know what I mean.
Common sense told me that before I could even become a neophyte mountaineer, I must prepare. I had two months before a major climb to be held in the wilderness of the Sierra Madre. I had a friend who became my fitness trainer, Arnold, a jolly man who’s into a religious group and some form of martial arts. The DOT building had a gym complete with all types of weights and some sets of treadmills. An occasional entertainment came in the form of sharing the gym with aerobics ladies. I thought that a nightly pump-up would change me into something better. Okay, I admit, some sort of a macho man ready to face the challenges of nature. But try to imagine this – I was a guy with a waistline of 28 inches. Arnold made me pump serious weights, stretched me, push ups of all kinds, modified pull-ups. He made me work! He made me work real hard! Sometimes, at the end of a session, I threw up. Two hours in the gym and 30 minutes in the comfort room, that was a familiar night for me. After a month of the regimen, I knew that I was ready. I called up a mountaineer and asked if I could join their Matulid River activity. The answer was a resoundingly flat “NO.”… The reason? I was not a mountaineer! It took me almost an hour begging him to let me join. I told him I’d hire a porter, bring my own food, even bring a super kalan just so I could join them. “No.”
So I was back to my daily regimen lifting weights, tread milling, stretching, and sometimes throwing up while at the same time trying to find ways to link up with a mountaineering group and finally get a taste of my first mountain. Then after about two months of the Matulid fiasco, I got a call from Ping Arcilla of the DOT Region V office in Legaspi City. They were organizing a climb to Mt. Mayon. I asked myself, am I really destined to have Mt. Mayon as my first mountain?
Back in the early 90’s, mountaineering was an odd sport. Only a few, seemingly macho men and women dared go into this intimidating recreation. The public notion then was, who in his right mind would carry 15 – 20 kilos of food, clothing and equipment, climb up a mountain for two days, and then go down anyway? Nobody had the answer but the mountaineers themselves.
The mountaineering equipment and gear then were considered rare and precious items. Lucky was he who can find and actually buy an authentic, usually U.S.-made mountaineering gear. It took me almost a month finding those items one by one. So I got an A-frame tent with wooden poles and without any rain fly, a sleeping bag, a backpack made by a Filipino mountaineer, and my only imported gear – a Hi-tec trekking shoes with the where made label torn out (up to now, I suspect that it was made in one of the export processing zones in R.P.)
A guy fully donned in those gears was considered a curious attraction in Manila’s streets. Ordinary people would suddenly stop and involuntarily stare at this person with huge shoes, bandana, dog tags and a colorful backpack that seemed like a sack of rice. Sometimes, tambays who see a passing mountaineer on his way to a climb would sing out loud the famous song of the Ghost Busters (that movie trio who were armed with backpack generators and zapped ghosts). Sometimes, guards stationed at the mall centers would not let mountaineers in fearing that they carried cannons! (They were joking… of course) I remember one time when there were five of us who came from a hiking activity and we were at EDSA waiting for a ride back home. We saw the right bus and started running towards it. Then I saw their faces. The people in the street suddenly split like an ocean (please forgive me for quoting sometimes from the Bible) and the mass of people opened up to what seemed like a wide avenue for us. Then it dawned on me. There we were, five big guys with big packs making big strides and creating huge noise as we ran. The people must have been afraid that we would ram them down. Or worse, they must have thought that we would trip and roll over them. What fear they must have had. As I looked into their eyes, the black portion seemed to disappear.
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12:19 AM
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