Trekking Mt. Apo

North Cotabato & Davao

Day 1: 05 April 2012

Kidapawan City

The word "APO", pronounced as (A'PO) in the Ilocano vernacular means - "Respected Elder", "Master", "Sir or Madam" or "Powerful".

For me, since Mt. Apo is the highest mountain in the Philippines, it is an "APO" of the Philippine mountains. I was actually thinking way back in my Elementary days how did the mountain get its name.

Mt. Apo is one of the few mountains in the Philippines that I considered a "must climb" mountain and it's been on my bucket list for a while since I started climbing in 2011. Climbing this mountain is a "dream-come-true" for me.

Climb ID

On the first day of the climb, we met at the Peoples Park in Davao city at 4:00AM, boarded a jeepney and head on to Digos city. We left the place at around 4:30AM. We reached the City of Digos at around 8AM and had a quick breakfast and buy our packed lunch.

River Crossing

We left the City of Digos heading towards the city of Kidapawan in North Cotabato past 8AM. After about 3 hours travel, we reached Kidapawan City around 11AM. We went straight to the City Tourism Office to register and secure our permit to climb Mt. Apo. After registering ourselves, there was a 30 minute briefing. The tourism officer in charge told us that there were aleast 400 climbers and they have deployed several military officers to guard the entrance and exit points at Kidapawan for security. After the briefing, we head on to the jump-of point at Mandarangan, Barangay Ilomavis in Kidapawan City. We officially started trekking at around 1:00PM. We were delayed by atleast 3 hours on our climb itinerary.

Bolders

We had our lunch on the trail. After having lunch, we assumed our trek going to Lake Venado. Along the trail, we passed by a steam. We crossed the river atleast 6 times. I was personally amazed by the beauty of the river with massive boulders. We didn't get wet though as we passed through bridges made of bamboo. Crossing the bamboo bridges requires balance to avoid slipping into the water. There are bridges that has no hand rails.

Coong Camp Site

After enjoying the river crossing and taking pictures on the rocks, we continued trekking and passed through nice trails mostly covered by trees. We have also passed through a "sayote" plantation and we were told not to touch it.

Dinner

At about 3PM, we reached a camp and took a rest. We were told that locals have put up several stores on the camp as they are expecting hundreds of climbers during the holy week and we were not surprised to see the stores on the first camp site. It was good on the other hand because supplies are readily available in case we need it.

Night Life at Coong Camp Site

At this point in time, our guides decided that we will camp somewhere for the night since we were no longer be allowed to trek all the way to Lake Venado for safety reasons. We continued trekking to Coong and reached the place past 5PM already. Coong is a small camp site near a stream of water and by the time we reached it, it was almost fully booked (crowded). Our guides had to make room for us to pitch our tents for the night.

The weather at Coong camp site is quite cold. We were still lucky that the weather was good. We had our lunch around 7PM. After lunch, it was a free time. I enjoyed practicing low light photography using a head lamp and with 2 of our climbers. Lights down at 9PM. See more photos.

Day 2: 06 April 2012

Ladder

On the second day of the climb, we woke up at 3AM, had a nice breakfast, break camp at 4AM and started trekking at 5AM. This was the more challenging portion of the trail. There were steep trails ranging from 75 to near 90 degrees in steepness and we had to brace ourselves on roots and trees to climb it. There were wooden stairs installed on some of the steep parts of the trail that provided a big help to climbers.

Lake Venado Camp Site

We reached Lake Venado past 9AM and pitched our tents. We started our summit assault past 9AM. The landscape view going to the summit of Mt. Apo is breathtaking. The view of the entire Lake Venado/camp site can be seen along the trail and it is majestic. 

Overlooking Lake Venado

We reached the summit of Mt. Apo around 1PM. The way it looks, there are 6 peaks and we went up the highest one - the official peak.

The Ring

Two of our fellow climbers had a pre-nuptial at the peak. Everyone enjoyed the peak and had photo-ops. By 2Pm, we had our lunch at the peak - camp site area. By this time, it started to rain. We were planning to see the boulders but we cancelled it due to the weather.

Summit Assault

We started our decent around 3PM. Going down is even more challenging than the assault because of the rain and the slippery, muddy trail. We were all back to Lake Venado camp site around 6PM.

Mt. Apo Summit

Weather at Lake Venado is cold. We had dinner and socials Lights off at 9PM. See more photos.

Day 3: 07 April 2012

Camp Site Lake Venado

On our last day, we had our breakfast past 6AM as we enjoyed taking pics with the nice sunrise at Lake Venado. We started our decent to the jump-off point past 7AM. We were back to the jump-off point around 12PM and had ourselves logged. We head back to Kidapawan tourism office for our certificates. We visited Kidapawan market shortly and bought some products like Marang fruit and Durian for some and they were very cheap.

Climb Certificates

We had our lunch along our way to Digos and Davao cities. We reached Davao City around 7PM. One thing that caught my attention was the absence of "Latrines" at Mt. Apo.

Nevertheless, climbing Mt. Apo was a dream that came true. See more photos.

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