Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Mt. Talamitam

There is just something about mountaineering -- I just can't get enough. On April 25-26, 2008, we decided to climb another mountain. Mount Talamitam is in Nasugbu, Batangas, near Mt. Batulao. At 630+ MASL, is doesn't seem that difficult. But right at the jump off, the was just going up.

Wrong again

Getting down from the bus, we found out we got down at the wrong place so we walked around half a kilometer before we got to a landmark. We were surprised to see an announcement though that Sir Nick wasn't incharge of the mountain anymore. We didn't know if we were still allowed to climb, but we just went on anyway.

NEW RULES
Mount Talamitam has been always under the care of Sir Nick but seems like it's different this time. The barangay people removed this previlege from him and took it to themselves. In the future, Talamitam will be a troublesome mountain to climb due to the new rules that are going to be implemented. A permit has to be secured from both the Municipality of Nasugbu and the Barangay. The municipal hall of Nasugbu is still a way off from the mountain. Another down side is that the registration fee is not so realistic. 25 pesos per person!! That's more expensive than the registration for Mt. Batulao and Batulao is far more worth it. This is INSANE!!

Still in Bad luck
I know I wrote the last two posts in the same night but I still didn't have my cam during this climb. I went to get it fixed. We climbed Talamitam without any camera but those on our cellphones. Hope you enjoy it though. We did try our best! :P

Pix by RJ Almocera & myself



Rat's Trap
We encountered a rat at the peak. It chewed on Ed's slippers. But worse.. IT CHEWED THROUGH MY TENT!! That's right, Ed's bread was stuck as the wall of the tent and the rat wanted the bread so he chewed through the tent.



Now I need to get a new tent!! A good thing AND a bad thing.. coz i don't want a rat chewing on my tent again!!

Mt. Marami


April 12-13, 2008, we joined a group of 23 people in climbing Mount Marami. The mountain is located in Maragondon, Cavite and rises to 405 MASL. Although, the mountain is not that high, getting there is pretty tough. It took us a 5hour hike under the hot sun to get there starting at around 3PM Saturday afternoon, we got to the campsite at 8PM, set up camped and went to bed.

The next day was a fun day at the summit. With all that rock formation, we had some fun bouldering, and jumping from one formation to the other. All more than with 100 meter drops.

My bad luck
It must have been a bad day for me. My camera stopped working at the beginning of the ride to Maragondon. My Canon PS A620, after a good 2 years of service, registered an E18 error. The lens refused to open.

All the pictures posted here are from Robert dela Cruz & Lloyd Gulfan. Thanks for the pics.





Tuesday, April 22, 2008

-- The Starting Line --

Just this month (a few weeks ago actually), I was introduced into running.

Jerry Karundeng is responsible for this. Somehow he got me interested in this sport. Since I've been doing some laps once in a while for endurance training for parkour, I decided to do it more seriously.. I've been caught in this running thing. I was aware of Jerry and Mac's runs for sometime now but it was only after I had a talk with Jerry that I was caught.

Thanks to Jerry, I may be running my first race on May 25 -- the Adidas-Air Immune Blast Race Series 10k. My plan was to join a 15k on June, but ya.. Jerry again.. :P hehe.. Yah, so you could call that peer pressure.. haha.. I've fallen prey to this cruel reality!!

Running is one of the elements I see necessary to improve. This is my goal -- To improve myself in this aspect. So far, the fastest mile I did was done in 7minutes & 44seconds.. This is done in one run, one lap. But I'm afraid I couldn't run that fast in a long run. So I seek to improve that too.. There is alot to train for.

Mr. Jerry Karundeng, thanks for introducing me to running.