Trekking Mt. Daguldul

Province of Batangas

23 June 2012

Aside from hiking, I also enjoy visiting different places to see old churches, houses and heritage sites. For more than a month that I had been visiting several historic and heritage sites, I finally felt like missing the mountains as if my last hike was several years ago. In addition to that, I missed a lot of friends that I met along the trail in my previous climbs. Searching for a nice day hike, I found Mt. Daguldol on the web. 

Mt. Daguldol is within the vicinity of the town of San Juan in Batangas. According to fellow hikers, normally it takes around 3 hours to reach the jump-off point at Barrio Hugom by private vehicle.

According to the tourism office at Batangas, the site has been a favorite trekking location of mountaineers. Although quite new to other hikers, it was discovered by the University of the Philippines Mountaineers in the 1990’s and is now a trekking destination.

I invited a close hiking buddy Bianca Ramos to join the hike. This trek was one of the few treks that I joined with lots of participants. At least 30 hikers joined the trek.

At our usual meeting place early in the morning, I saw Bianca, Sigrid, Adrian and other trekking friends. It was so nice to see them all again after a while.

On board 3 vans, we left Manila at around 3:00AM and head on to the province of Batangas. We had a quick stopover at a gas station along SLEX for a break and to buy items that we need for the hike. 

We reach the jump-off point at around 6:30AM and started trekking at 7:00AM. The first part of the trek was a walk along the seashore where several resorts can be found. The rockies are nice. There were lots of coral stones scattered on the sand. We started our ascent at Sitio Catmon at around 7:30AM.

Trail

According to the locals, the trail is "man-made" by the Locals of San Juan. The trail is covered by trees that made our trekking a little cooler although the sun is up and the sky was completely clear.

The trail is nice and very similar to the trails of Mt. Pinagbanderahan in Quezon and Mt. Manalmon in Bulacan.

We reached the summit at 10:15AM and waited under a tree for other hikers to arrive.

I never thought it was the summit already. The summit is quite plain compared to other summits. Just at the side of the summit is the view deck that can be reached in 10 minutes from the summit.

Mt. Daguldul Summit

We had an early lunch and then photos. At 11:45AM we decided to went up the view deck. At 12:00PM we started our descent to the jump-off point.

By 2:30PM, we were back at the jump-off point, tidy up and waited for other participants to arrive from the summit while other hikers enjoyed the beach.

We left San Juan at around 5:00PM.

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Photo gallery

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