Afterthought: SOMETIMES AN ORDINARY CLIMB CAN BECOME AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE

It is strange seeing your climb mates falling their feet sideways of a trail made up of huge rocks and high mountain cliffs. It is even weird seeing them taking the hardest breath just to survive a climb.  As an extreme outdoor sports, mountaineering – despite its being very popular now – requires a stable physical and mental strength which others ignored more often than not.

As a mountaineer for as long as I can remember, I also used to guiding guests especially in the mountain that I love most – MT. APO. They are different personalities with different outlooks in life. Their reasons of climbing also varies. There are climbers who love to meditate. Others climb for empowerment, believing that reaching the summit is an achievement only few people can do. In a broader perspective, people climb because it’s their way of communing with nature and to appreciate the beauty of earth that can only be recognized when they are in high altitudes. Mountain climbing has also been considered by others as relaxing and enable them to escape from a complex world below.

As a mountain guide, I had to adjust to a kind of guest that I head up to the mountain. I had to be very supple to fit to what the guests need during the whole course of the expedition. Which of course needs an extraordinary level of patience and determination. Of all the tasks I do, mountain guiding is one of the toughest because aside from securing your guest, you also have to survive for yourself.

In a very rare occasion, I recently had a climb that I considered one of the most memorable ever. Knowing Mt. Apo is the most colorful mountain for me, my guest who is an independent and firm woman had added a colorful component to the journey. She was as strong as I thought she could do the climb effortlessly. However, it was the other way around. When we started the second day, she had trouble doing the boulder face trek. I could really feel how hard it was for her. Her feet started ailing then, and most of the time she struggled to get past the track of higher elevation and lesser oxygen. 

With our constant pacing, we both reached the summit. I applauded her for the job done but she nodded nothing. I saw her in the summit sitting, facing the other side of the mountain. Speechless. All the while, I saw her crying. Her lips quivered and blinked fast, but it did not stop the tears from falling down her face. True to that, I realized that this woman is also mortal. Her visual response to a certain emotion was visible. The emotion, of course, was not sad emotion. Her crying was a manifestation of her happiness for reaching the country’s highest summit and for realizing that life alone is a bunch of uphills and downhills, just like Mt. Apo.

Our descent was also horrible. We reached LOGSAC gully by 5:00 PM and I decided to take off her shoes because she could no longer walk. We night trekked the track from Tinikaran Camp 2 to Tinikaran Camp 1 with her hiking barefoot (or at least with pair of socks). The assistance came very late we were halfway when Adel came to provide two more headlamps. At around 7:30 PM, we reached the campsite.

As a compliment, the entire climb enabled me to know more of the woman. Spending most of her life in a complicated scenario, I learned that she has her share of life’s ups and downs. She succumbed to several miserable experiences but eventually she survived all of those. That is why I commended her for being brave, not only in climbing Mt. Apo but also for traversing the cruel side of life.

Mentally she is tough. Physically, she is a Hollywood material and I guess I don’t have to explain why. She seldom smiles though as I observed, but when she smiles it opens a lot of opportunities. Her outward attribute is coupled with a very beautiful inside qualities. These compliments have been boring me and you I thought, but she deserves all these. It is more of seeing the good thing from her only mountaineering can translate.

Many times I successfully spearheaded a climb to Mt. Apo with different people from different places with different purpose. Many times I also felt the guilt of being the person behind their struggles. Many times I unleashed my personal insanity in the mountains with other people as lovely fatalities rather than bare witnesses. At some point I realize when will this addiction ever come to end?  If it ends, I pray that it will be in a graceful way.

If it ends, I can always say that my climb with this woman deserves to be in the mountaineering record book as one of the best climbs ever.