A storm in Mt. Daguldol

There is a storm in a teacup that almost stopped us from making it to the summit of Mt. Daguldol, a mountain in San Juan, Batangas. 

The storm is threatening to spill over between the municipalities of San Juan and Lobo, who are currently squabbling over who has territorial rights over Mt. Daguldol. 

Noelito Pascu, chief of the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office of San Juan, explained the issue in a nutshell: “The registration area of all the hikers plus the trail itself is within the area of San Juan, Batangas, but the summit itself is within the area of Lobo, Batangas.”

While this has not been clarified and settled between the two municipalities, most hiking activities going to Mt. Daguldol have officially ceased in the meantime. 

Until we came along and went for the summit anyway, after much hemming and hawing. 

We figured, if we unintentionally fanned the storm and got arrested or slapped with fines, we would raise a conversation about it, move forward, and come closer, we hope, to a resolution. 

No conversation, and we are stuck forever on this impasse that is not good either for San Juan or Lobo and all of us crazy, possessed people who just want to see what it takes to climb this forbidden mountain, to see what is there to see on top of Mt. Daguldol at the base and everything in between just because, well, it is there. 

Call us mountaineers and hikers crazy, but this sport, this insanity, has made an obscene amount of money for tourism in many municipalities in Rizal, Batangas, Davao, the Cordilleras, and many other provinces in the Philippines, and in many countries around the world where there are mountains. 

Wild and raw

And in the Philippines, we have mountains coming out of our ears, beautiful mountains with beautiful forests, I might add, even more beautiful than many I have seen in, say, the European Alps, for instance, where the mountains are manicured, with a curated kind of beauty. Whereas ours are still wild and raw and seemingly as fresh as the day some divine force breathed life into them. 

Mt. Daguldol is one of them — with thick, virgin rainforests, and rare flora, fauna, and bird species that most of us are never going to see, appreciate, and feel invested in preserving for future generations. 

All this while two municipalities are locked in combat over who gets control over it. It’s a simple case of putting the cart before the horse. Because if money is the issue, no one, not either municipality, will see any money out of this growth industry while they continue to stop hikers from going up. There would be no climbers, no interest, no buzz, no hype, no money-making tourism industry that would have a stake in preserving it, to evolve from it. 

Right now, only illegal loggers are making real money out of it. 

The trail to Mt. Daguldol has been around for a long time. My 26-year-old son John climbed to the peak when he was 12. But until now, it is nowhere near the popularity of, for me, lesser mountains, like Mt. Daraitan or Mt. Batulao, which are already generating income for their municipalities. 

In fact, Mt. Daguldol’s popularity as a worthy mountain to climb, along with the great mountains of Batangas, has sunk almost to oblivion. 

Hardly anyone is climbing it because no climber wants to go up the summit and be made to feel like he is committing a crime. 

Let them climb

I say let people go freely up the mountains, all the way to the summit. 

Let people discover its beauty. Let us not quibble over dollars and cents because right now, while the leaders of these municipalities are stopping people from climbing and very few know of this mountain, there are only cents or none to be made, and why quibble about that while the vultures of the logging industry slowly finish off the mountain behind their backs? 

Let them instead have a conversation on how to generate more interest and awareness about Mt. Daguldol as a rare thing of splendor and beauty, so that more people would want to see it and more groups would want to have a stake in preserving it. 

It will not happen while they continue with this petty prohibition, stopping climbers from going up. 

When the time comes — and it will take a while — when there is real income to quibble about, that’s when they have a conversation about which portion of the pot goes to which municipality and who is in charge and who owns and who maintains which part.

There is a lot of potential, actually, for Mt. Daguldol and other mountains of San Juan to generate enough serious income for both municipalities, according to Guy Tiongson, a veteran climber and president of the Sierra Madre Outdoors Inc.

“It is the perfect climb. There is much to see in the mountain itself. Rain forest, rivers, and waterfalls. It has a beautiful grassland summit, and unlike other mountains, it’s possible to finish the trek in half a day and still have time to go to the beach. San Juan is lucky. Because other provinces have mountains only, but San Juan has both mountains and sea.” Tiongson said. 

Nini Andrada Sacro, founder of Climb Against Cancer and another veteran climber, agreed with Tiongson: “It is actually a very satisfying climb. With enough sights to see and enough challenges to make it a satisfying climb, but short enough not to intimidate beginners.”

Poetry of silent communion

There’s another good reason to climb all the way to the summit against and above all prohibitions, I told our group of stubborn and intrepid hikers who decided to buck the odds: “To know what will happen if we do. How poetic to get arrested just for climbing a mountain.”

And you have to be a mountain hiker to understand that we hike, among other things, for the poetry of it all, the poetry of life that most people miss. 

The poetry of forests and hills and rivers and waterfalls. The poetry of arriving at the summit of a mountain, where few have the courage and will to go. 

The poetry of a picnic on the summit, eating with our hands, digging into a simple meal wrapped in banana leaves that up there no Michelin meal can match. 

The poetry of rest and sleep lying on the grass after a long climb with trees and clouds and sky as shelter. 

The poetry of silent communion with people who understand each other without words or explanation. The poetry of taking leave after a brief respite, knowing that this moment in time, despite how beautiful it is, will never return. That we can never conquer a mountain or own it. That we are just passing through. 

Good stuff. Great stuff. Poetic stuff. Let no politics, please, get in the way of that. – Rappler.com

A former journalist, the author is the owner and proprietor of Casa Amara, a private resort in San Juan, Batangas, and a member of the Barako Hiking Group.