The first Hike for light,
Mt. Apo, was scheduled for November 18th-21st. However, I received the following text on
Nov. 16th:
“Hi Danny, Please be
informed that Mt. Apo Climb has been indefinitely postponed, as per recommendation
of the LGUs and the 39th Infantry Brigade. There have been heavy
armed group movements and encounters within Mt. Apo lately. We will confer again next week about the
situation and we will see when we can reschedule the hike. Sorry for the inconvenience this might have
caused you. We hope you understand your
safety is important to us.”
This was quite a bummer, as
we had all been pretty psyched for this first hike. However, the second hike was scheduled for
the following weekend.
The Mt. Kitanglad climb
began at the international airport in Manila at 5am Friday morning. The Manila Crew, consisting of 3 Solar Energy
Foundation representatives, 2 Team Everest volunteers, and 2 significant
others, boarded our flight (donated by Cebu Pacific Airlines) bound for Cagayan
de Oro, Mindanao. From Cagayan de Oro we
traveled by van to the city of Malaybalay, kicking off the hike with lunch and
a press conference prepared by the Office of Mayor Hon Inaki Zubiri. Here we also met the rest of Team Everest, as
well as the local climbers that would accompany us up the mountain. We were 32 in all, a combination of awesome individuals
from local climbing groups, nature NGOs, and Everest expeditions. After lunch we piled our gear into a Jeepney
and headed for the base of Mt. Dulang Dulang, the highest peak in the Mt.
Kitanglad Range.
Here is our evening
itinerary:
1500 Lamp Use &
Management Orientation – Turnover Ceremony
1700 Dinner - Prepare for
Next day’s climb
1900 Ritual Sacrifice by
the Talaandig tribe
2100 Lights out
The ritual sacrifice was
performed by three elders from the village.
A white cloth was laid out on the table, and each hiker placed a 1 peso
coin around the outside edge of the cloth, heads up. Four bottles of “Fighter” brand wine were
also placed on the table, along with a 1000 peso bill and a dozen eggs. After a
prayer spoken by the most elder member of the tribe, they brought out three
chickens, held them over a bucket, slit their throats one by one, and drained
the blood into the bucket. After being
slaughtered, the chickens were tossed onto the ground, flapped around a couple
times, then lay still. Once dead, the chickens were loaded into a pot and
boiled for about an hour.
While the chickens were
boiling, we passed the lanterns to the tribal elders. During the turnover ceremony, we showed them
how to use the different settings, recharge the lantern, and charge a cell
phone. The most important part of this
is to teach them the importance of charging the lantern every day. Our lanterns use a deep cycle gel battery,
which really isn’t designed to run all the way down to empty. If that happens, they take much longer to
recharge. The advice we give them is to
not let the battery drain down below 3 bars out of 5, which is sustainable if
they monitor their usage and charge it every day.
The elders then served the
three chickens to us, informing each hiker to pull off and eat a piece of
meat. Afterwards, they cut the white
cloth into small pieces and tied one coin into each piece of cloth. The next day we would carry these up the
mountain for safety.
Dinner that night, as was
the case for all meals on the Hike for light, consisted of canned tuna donated
by Century Tuna. Over the next 3 days we
would get quite creative with our tuna combinations. You know what goes great with rice? Canned Tuna.
You know what goes great with bread and eggs? Canned tuna.
You know what makes coffee taste great?
Drinking out of a cup recently filled with Canned Tuna.
We awoke at 4:30 the next morning
and broke camp shortly after sunrise. We began along a slippery, rocky, dirt
road, winding up the side of the mountain between assorted crops and farmhouses. This soon turned into a thin, steep, muddy
path through the forest that continued until the summit. The scenery was spectacular, lush green
mountains as far as the eye could see, and up close the deep greens of grasses,
ferns and tree leaves. Thick moss grew along every tree, and the much of the
forest looked like a scene out of Avatar.
The ground was so soft in places it would depress noticeably with each
step.
The hike to our campsite
took about 8 hours. We stopped for lunch
next to a river making its way down the mountainside, and enjoyed some cans of
Tuna and a couple granola bars. You know
what goes great with granola bars? You
guessed it. I was a bit hesitant about
drinking water from the river, as I remember my GHS Post 84 training about
Giardia, etc present in natural water sources.
However, I didn’t really have much choice, as this was the only source
of water throughout the hike.
At our lunch spot was the
first time I noticed that we had porters carrying a bunch of gear up to our
campsite. These were guys from the local
village, payed roughly 12 dollars a day, carrying extra tents, sleeping bags
and food up the mountain. These guys
were incredible, each one was about half my size, and carried a pack 3-4 times
the size of my own. One of them was
wearing flip flops, and one was about 50 years old and BAREFOOT. These guys were true champions, running up and
down the mountain barely breaking a sweat.
Our campsite was about an
hour hike from the summit, and we arrived by 4 in the afternoon. This left us enough time to set up camp and
cook dinner before nightfall. Once it
got dark (around 7:30), we all gathered in a circle around the light of our
solar lantern. Fred, a 60 year old
gentlemen from team Everest, pulled out a little red and white cup which he had
carried all the way up Everest many years ago.
He proceeded to pour himself a shot of Tanduay rum, and tell us a bit
about himself and why he was there. He
then proclaimed that we would go around in a circle and all give a short
introduction of ourselves and our involvement in the Hike for light. And in the words of Fred, “if you don’t
drink, you can’t talk!” This initiated a
raucous role call as each person was peer pressured into taking shots and
giving a speech for the whole group.
After each person in their 20’s finished speaking, Fred (who was a bit
tipsy by this point) would inquire – “Single? Are you single??”
It got cold that night, and
I related during my speech that this was the first time I had felt cold since
arriving in the Philippines 4 months ago.
It also rained throughout the night, and I ended up using all of the
cold weather gear I had brought. We
headed for the summit at 4:30 in the pitch dark. This trail was even steeper, and quite
slippery under the wet conditions. Much
of it required scrambling using both hands to maintain balance. We all reached the summit by 5:30, and took
pictures for about an hour.
Unfortunately it was quite foggy and cloudy, and there wasn’t much of a
view. However, there was a grove of
giant bonsai trees where we all hung our coins from the ritual on the first night.
The hike down went
surprisingly quickly, less than half the time to hike up. Upon arriving back at the village we all
changed out of our wet, muddy hiking gear, and showered (Bucket shower with
frigid water), and put on the relatively clean clothes we had left. The plan was to travel by Jeepney to another
village for the final lantern turnover ceremony, but shortly after changing we
were informed that there would actually be another hike to get to the next
village. Initially, the next village was
supposed to be an hour jeepney ride, and a half hour hike. We waited at camp from about 3pm-5pm for
stragglers to arrive back from the hike.
However, as it began to get later and later we decided it would be best
to go on ahead and provide for other transportation for the last of the hikers.
The hour Jeepney ride turned
out to be quite a bit longer than we initially planned. The Jeep broke down at one point, we ran into
heavy traffic, and stopped for gas.
Additionally, it started pouring rain, so much so that the Jeepney
driver informed us that he would not be able to deliver us to the trailhead. This meant an additional 3 hour hike to reach
our destination, which certainly wasn’t going to happen. After stopping again to haggle and discuss,
we managed to coerce the driver to at least make an attempt to drive down the
dirt road and deliver us to the trailhead.
Fortunately he was able to get us most of the way there, and we
disembarked around 8pm.
From here we all put our
packs back on, and headed off into the darkness with our headlamps. Immediately after starting the hike it resumed
pouring rain, and boy did we get a small taste of what life is like without electricity. The trail was quite muddy
and steep in places, and we were hiking in pitch darkness, led only by a couple
of locals with the pretense that we would eventually arrive at a village. There were two river crossings, requiring us
to jump from boulder to boulder to reach the other side. I attempted to keep up with Janet, one of the
members of the first all women team to ever traverse Mt. Everest, and we soon
became separated from the rest of the group.
This left 3 of us - me, Janet, and one of the guides, hiking with just
my headlamp. Around 9pm, we finally we
saw a solar light in the distance, and soon arrived at the village.
We were all soaking wet and
pretty worn out, but could not have received a warmer welcome. Several families from the village were still
up, and had hot chocolate and a whole table full of food waiting for us, none
of which contained Tuna. We observed
another chicken sacrifice ritual, turned over the solar lanterns, and feasted
to our heart’s content.
At this village we also met
an old woman that weaves straw bags to sell at the local market. We learned that she is unable to weave during
most days, since the heat makes the straw brittle. Therefore, she only weaves at night, but has
limited light options. She can run their
generator (very expensive), use a kerosene lamp (dirty, smelly, dangerous), or
use a solar lantern! An older gentlemen, upon first seeing the solar lantern, immediately proclaimed in Visayas dialect that it would be an excellent tool for hunting frogs. It’s wonderful to
hear these stories, and to find additional applications of our lanterns that
never crossed our minds.
After dinner we all slept on
the floor of their activity center, slumber party style. The following morning we again awoke early,
and began hiking out before sunrise. The
hike out, along the same trail that had been so miserable the night before,
turned out to be gorgeous. The skies had
cleared, and as the sun rose we lazily hiked out through open meadows full of
flowers and dotted with fruit trees, with the peaks of the Mt. Kitanglad range
in the background.
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