Sunday morning we left Davao city in two SUVs and made the 3-hour drive to Kidapawan. The long drive through the countryside was quite interesting. My eyes were glued to the passing scenery. I saw rice paddies, goats and other animals, including some sort of animal that resembled an ox. The ever-changing scenery had my eyes transfixed to the window. The rustic scenery was beautiful. 

In Kidapawan we stopped at the tourism office to get a permit to climb Apo. That took a long time because there was some sort of problem, though I’m not sure what. Luckily someone in our intrepid group of soon-to-be mountain climbers knew someone there who was a friend of the mayor of Kidapawan. That man called the mayor on our behalf and the mayor actually showed up at the tourist office to give us special permission to climb Apo.

I rode in a different vehicle after leaving Kidapawan. While going over bumps or dips in the road on the way to Kidapawan, I had hit my head on the roof three times as we neared Kidapawan, so Geejay and I rode in the other SUV because it was bigger. The driver and his brother were of Indian blood, their parents having migrated from India to the Philippines. Sunil and Parkash were both raised in the Philippines and thus spoke the native language as well as English. Their English was very good. These were educated, intelligent men. Parkash is a lung doctor and his brother Sunil is some sort of entrepreneur who owns some kind of company. I liked them both, but took a stronger liking to Parkash as time went on because he and I seemed to think alike in many ways. They are both good men.

After leaving Kidapawan, we drove on another country road for a time, eventually reaching a dirt road. I think we drove for at least an hour on that dirt road, passing many small rural homes. We stopped at one house and picked up some mountain guides and porters. Eventually we passed the geothermal plant that generates electricity for Kidapawan. We came to a place with armed security guards. These guys had rifles. We had to show them our permit and give them our IDs. I gave them my Florida driver’s license. We had to sign in. We then drove another 7km up the dirt road.

We began our hike in rain forest at exactly 1:15PM. I had no idea of the terror that awaited me. I expected this to be a walk in the park, albeit, an uphill walk. After a 20-minute walk up a beautiful trail we stopped and one of the mountain guides began tying a long rope to a tree at the edge of a cliff. My heart began to race. “Why is he doing that?” I asked. “Surely you don’t expect me to scale a cliff?” “Didn’t I mention that I have an extreme fear of heights?”

A couple of others began their descent and I was too scared to look. I asked why we have to descend a cliff. We should be going up, not down. We should be walking up a long and winding trail. This is not what I expected. I was scared stiff, but I had no choice. What could I do? We were in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization. I couldn’t just say, “See ya later, I’m not doing this.”  I grabbed the rope and slowly made my way down, so terrified I was trembling. When I got down to the bottom my heart was racing, my breathing was shallow and I was still trembling. I was covered with mud from hugging the wet, muddy wall of the cliff. The guide who was beside me at the moment asked if I was OK. Maybe he thought I was having a heart attack, but it was a panic attack.

We then walked a short distance and came upon a beautiful waterfall. It was small, but it was so pretty, the water gracefully tumbling down the rocky slopes. We paused for a while to take in the surroundings. As I sat, resting on a rock, one of the guides (or maybe it was one of the porters) was picking leeches out of my hair. They somehow get on the vegetation growing out from the side of the cliff and attach themselves to anyone who comes in contact with the foliage.

After walking a short while on level ground we came to another cliff. My biggest fear lay there before me. I was going to have to ascend up a cliff using for a ladder only roots and rocks that stuck out. The fear I was feeling was so intense that I can’t describe it. A porter named Al went ahead of me and stayed with me during the entire ascent up that cliff.. He spoke little English and was constantly saying, “Left foot here” or “right foot here” as he pointed at a root or at a rock sticking out. He would point to a root and say “hold this one.” When I got to the top I was amazed that I had done it. I was proud of myself. I was feeling a strange mix of emotions, fear about what might lie ahead, exhilaration over what I had just done, and awe over the beauty that surrounded me.

There were more harrowing moments to come. We walked on level ground or slightly uphill, climbed a cliff, walked more, climbed another cliff. Soon the rain forest gave way to a cloud forest. Finally we reached the most treacherous cliff of all. It was inclined at 87 degrees, which is not really much more than the other ones we climbed, which I estimate to be 75 to 80 degrees. There was a sign at the bottom of the cliff, the only sign we had encountered thus far. It read, “Extra Careful @87 Degree Portion.” This cliff had a makeshift ladder. It was made from tree limbs fastened together. I looked at it and said, “I can’t do it.” But what choice did I have? I never grabbed hold of anything so tightly in my life nor had I ever climbed anything so slowly. After completing the first section, I had to move sideways just a bit and climb the next section. Then I had to move sideways over a straight drop-off. The only thing to get footing on were the bumps sticking out from the cliff. The only thing to hold was roots sticking out of the cliff from the trees that were at the top, only about another ten or so feet above me. A mountain guide helped me by reaching for my hand as I got to a safe ledge. The next ten or so feet were not as difficult physically but due to the sheer drop I was terrified.

I was so worried about Geejay that I was almost panicking. She doesn’t have a fear of heights like I do but I was worried about whether she is physically capable of climbing it. I was so scared that she might slip. But there she was, coming up right behind me. I breathed an intense sigh of relief as she made it to the top.

I had no idea that our mountain climbing experience would be so arduous. Aside from the fear factor that affected me so much, it was a very physically demanding task, and perhaps the thin air was beginning to affect us. It was extremely tiring. I was very impressed with Geejay that she was capable of such a physical feat. And I was very much impressed by some of the others with us. I would have never thought that Maan and her mother Gina would climb that mountain with such seemingly effortless finesse. They sure earned my respect.

After we reached the top of that cliff we began a long walk through terrain that was somewhat difficult, but not too bad.  Thank God there was no more cliff-climbing that day! After walking another hour through the cloud forest, nightfall came upon us. Mt Apo is situated at 7 degrees north latitude. At such proximity to the equator there is little twilight. Nightfall came fast. It seemed as if it was daylight one minute and dark the next. We had to walk in darkness for about 20 minutes before we reached a large caldera. It was huge! I was told that the entire caldera was filled with water last October and is called Lake Venado. Only one small section of the caldera was filled with water now, the rest being covered with low vegetation. Lake Venado had shrunk an incredible amount since October.

We had split into three groups early in the climb. The first two groups had already set up camp. We walked the equivalent of about two football fields of flat terrain to get to the campsite. We were over 7,000 feet high.

The stars were incredible! But soon it was cloudy again. After all, we were in a clearing in a cloud forest. It is hard to sleep on a sleeping bag on top of lumpy ground and with no pillow, and with rain pouring down outside and dripping into our leaky tent. Geejay and I had to share a sleeping bag, which we unzipped and used as a mattress. In the morning when we woke up, the tent was soaking wet, inside and out.

A word about out mountain guides and porters: Those guys are incredible! They are small, wiry young men, without an ounce of visible fat on their bodies. They are very small men, but they are as strong as oxen, sure-footed as mountain goats, and agile as spider monkeys. Those little guys are able to stand on slippery ground, grab my wrist and pull me up, though I’m sure I’m almost twice their weight. I had trouble distinguishing between the guides and porters as the porters were quite often doing the work of guides. Geejay told me that the biggest difference between the two was that the guides spoke good English, but the porters spoke almost no English.

Geejay says the porters are indigenous people. They are pure-blooded indigenous Filipino people. The vast majority of Filipinos have some Chinese and some Spanish blood, but not these mountain people. They are poor mountain-dwelling indigenous people and they don’t speak good English like most Filipinos. One of them, Al, asked me if Geejay is my husband.

A guide by the name of Smol was truly a good man in my estimation, going above and beyond his duty as guide, helping me so much, and always offering words of encouragement.. He and I had a good rapport and by the time our trip was over I thought of him as a friend.  I liked Al a lot too, but his English was so rudimentary that I could not bond with him the way I did with Smol.

Sleeping in that tent, on a sleeping bag that was opened and spread out on the lumpy ground was not exactly what I would call comfortable accommodations. I rolled up an article of clothing (don’t remember what it was) to use as a pillow and I had a small shawl over me. It was decidedly uncomfortable, and the rain and leaky tent certainly didn‘t help. Somehow Geejay and I managed to get some much needed sleep.