200 mountaineers, Koreans to conquer Sierra Madre

SAN LUIS, Aurora — Some 200 seasoned mountaineers from various parts of the country and Korean students will risk life and limb when they embark starting tomorrow on a journey up the Sierra Madre mountain range in this town to help promote Aurora’s tourism potentials and boost environmental awareness.

The adventure, which will run up to Nov. 29, is considered the most challenging involving the Sierra Madre since the Aurora side of the 1.8-million hectare majestic mountain range — the longest in the country, stretching from Cagayan to Sorsogon and covering nine provinces — is regarded as the most treacherous, according to its main organizer, the Noble Blue Falcons International Association Inc. (NBIIAI), a private mountaineering organization.

Leonardo Usita, NBIIAI national president, told The STAR that the mountain trek is exciting in the sense that many mountaineers dread the Aurora mountainside because it is fraught with danger.

"It’s an Extra Challenge because even seasoned mountaineers are having reservations scaling it because it has an abundance of cobras and snakes," Usita told a media briefing.

"Kaya ba natin ito? Di ba tayo nabibigla (Can we do it? Are we not being stampeded into doing it)?" he quoted some of the mountaineers as asking when they were mapping out a strategy to scale the peak of Sierra Madre’s Aurora side.

What makes the journey also frightening, according to Usita, is the fact that the Aurora side has a series of mountains and the province is calamity-prone, making such a trek extremely dangerous.

"Imagine climbing the mountains in the midst of a typhoon and with cobras and snakes around? But these are all part of the risks we have to deal with as mountaineers," he said.

Usita described the trek as a virtual "journey into the unknown" since mountaineers from outside have never explored the mountains of Aurora.

He said Christian pastors will accompany them in the adventure.

Usita said the mountaineers will come from Falcons chapters in Metro Manila, Pampanga, Tarlac, Cabanatuan City (Nueva Ecija), Rizal, Antique, Batangas, Cagayan, and Marinduque.

Joining them are members of the Elite Red Falcons Climbers (ERFC), the Aurora-Sierra Madre Blue Mountaineers (ASMBM), and Korean students.

The trekkers will negotiate the mountains in the coastal baran—gays of Real, Dibalo, Zarah, Ditumabo, L. Pimentel, Nonong Sr., Diteki, Dibut, Dibayabay, Dikapinisan, and Dimanayat.

He said climbing the mountains of Real and Dibut, which are both 1,000 meters high, would take at least 10 hours.

"To do so, (a mountaineer) has to cross 20 rivers," he said.

Besides the mountain trek, the group, which called on Gov. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo recently, will also conduct crash courses in mountaineering, coastal environment conservation, forest trekking, river crossing, disaster search, rescue and retrieval operations, jungle survival, and surfing and swimming as part of its Falcons Advocacy for Tourism and Environment (FATE) and Falcons Environmental Adventure and Training (FEAT).

Angara-Castillo said the Sierra Madre adventure will not only enhance the skills of Filipino mountaineers but also showcase the mountain range as a premier tourist spot with its pristine forests and beautiful scenery.

She said the province boasts of the longest coastline in the country and 78 percent forest cover, the densest nationwide.

The UP Diliman-based Falcons, which was founded in 1996, has 1.9 million members worldwide, 300,000 of whom are in the Philippines.

Its members include environmentalists, peace advocates, professionals, and technocrats.