Septuple Birthday Climb

January 22-23, 2011

This climb was organized for the birthday climb of my seven friends; Onin, Jimi, Cyprus, Jaycee, Adam, Ian and Cindy. The destination is Mt. Balagbag at San Jose del Monte, Bulacan.

I thought this will be an easy climb, but I guess it will not be fun if there will be no challenge. Instead of trekking the normal trail which is very wide that even a motorcycle can pass up until the summit, one of our friend suggested that we take the waterfalls trail going up. Literally speaking, we were climbing the waterfalls for more or less 5 hours I guess. Wet, steep, rocky and slippery; it was quite a challenge. I even had a bruises on my knees. The trail ends on a road which heads to the summit, about more or less two hours of trek and you will be arriving at the summit.

My assessment on the waterfalls trail is that it is much harder than Tarak Ridge's Papaya River to campsite and MakTrav's Melkas Ridge. If I am not mistaken, the trail we passed by the waterfalls was not a common trail mountaineers use. Well atleast I have tried using that trail.

We arrived at the summit before the sun sets. We were able to set camp before it gets dark. We were divided into four groups to prepare for dinner; our group (Team Ynna) prepared Sinigang na Baboy, Team Onin prepared Menudo, Team Cindy cooked Spaghetti Macaroni and Team Dante cooked Caldereta. It was a fiesta dinner, yum yum. A very rewarding meal.

Socials started right after the dinner. I decided to sleep when our Gran Matador (local brandy) were all consumed, they still continued with The Bar (local gin with fruit flavor).

The noise of my companions woke me up, when I get out of the tent, it is when I realized that me and my girlfriend were the last person to woke up. We get out of the tent and TANAN!, breakfast is ready. Thanks guys!

Break camp time, then we started descending. This will be a short descend. After less than 2 hours, we then arrived at the pick up point were the jeepney was waiting. On the way to Tungko we got flat tires (are we too heavy?). It is lunch time when we arrived at Tungko, the other planned on going home already and the majority of us were still planning on what to do. The decision, go to sir Rufo's house to take our lunch.

We stayed at sir Rufo's house until almost midnight. Thanks sir Rufo for your place. It was a very fun post climb/celebration. It was very fun thanks to sir Jimmi.