Another time-spent to my ever-loved hometown.
I've been visiting my hometown more often (Coron, Palawan) this past few years. Will be celebrating Christmas there with my father and two of my siblings.
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| foggy summit Mt. Dalara. |
I've been visiting my hometown more often (Coron, Palawan) this past few years. Will be celebrating Christmas there with my father and two of my siblings.
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| At Kayangan Lake |
Before I went on my vacation, I already have plans rolled out.
Most of them were outdoor activities like hiking, jogging, snorkeling and etc. Being born in a province, grew up before the birth of smartphones, I's (Itouch, Ipad and Iphone) and the viral selfies, we are active outdoor enthusiast in pursuit of natural happiness . Those times our only addiction was wandering in the vast of outdoor. Some of our infatuations were go fishing, hiking, camping, swimming
and a lot of outdoor games like patentero, tamaan-bata, tumbang-lata, paway,
tatsing, baril-barilan, teks-money, sampawan and soccer (These terms are widely
use in our province). We are the 90's and this new generation have no idea how much simpler yet full of happiness we are before.
Such activities were never a thing to me. I was once being gone far from home. Never afraid to
dangled outside the starry night.
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| The Mananabas! |
One of the usual thing we love to do in a boredom days were hiking and camp out into
the midst of the forest. We do cooking with only matches in our pockets, set up a tree
house with only a bolo knife then placed some traps to those wild-native-chickens for our main course. It's just like hiking in an old-fashioned way and more of creativeness.
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| Looking down from Mt. Tapyas |
Before Mt. Tapyas became stairs mountain, I once hiked it when it was a pure grassland uphill then nowadays it became one of the major tourist attraction, for me mountains must be kept the way they are before though we're not in control of what will happen next. There so many good reasons why I love hiking so much that I keep chasing of my past.
One major plan listed down on my bucket list was hiking Mt. Dalara-The highest mountain in the Calamian group of island.
If you will ask the locals in Coron, no one will agree if you were planning to hike Mt. Dalara for some customary reasons. I guess they don't use to hike much, due to the fact that Coron is sorrounded by pristine beaches and the only mountain they recommend to hike is Mt. Tapyas. Another reason is that Mt. Dalara wasn't open to the idea of hiking because this place is purposed for cellular site and not hiking and or maybe considering this as a dangerous to pursue.
Despite of being this a cell sites for leading mobile service provider, Mt. Dalara is open for all who are interested to climb the mountain and the best to kill of your thirst for adventure.
Only youngsters who'd like challenges and have guts are coming in this bone-tired activities and only few groups are into this, usually 18 ages above.
Before my vacation gets to the end I really need to instigate this plan. I don't wanna lose the opportunity this time because my last vacation was less adventurous due to typhoon approaching into us that made my plan to hike Mt. Dalara to be cancelled and later found out it was only a false report. Jeez!
Unfortunately, the super-typhoon Yolanda hammered the Coron before we even get off there, given us the idea of how will the trail looks like or worse not to be passable.
I call out and assembled my gang (consist of my childhood friends and cousins) and roll out my plan to hike Mt. Dalara in the next day and they quickly thumbs up to this.
One major plan listed down on my bucket list was hiking Mt. Dalara-The highest mountain in the Calamian group of island.
If you will ask the locals in Coron, no one will agree if you were planning to hike Mt. Dalara for some customary reasons. I guess they don't use to hike much, due to the fact that Coron is sorrounded by pristine beaches and the only mountain they recommend to hike is Mt. Tapyas. Another reason is that Mt. Dalara wasn't open to the idea of hiking because this place is purposed for cellular site and not hiking and or maybe considering this as a dangerous to pursue.
Despite of being this a cell sites for leading mobile service provider, Mt. Dalara is open for all who are interested to climb the mountain and the best to kill of your thirst for adventure.
Only youngsters who'd like challenges and have guts are coming in this bone-tired activities and only few groups are into this, usually 18 ages above.
Before my vacation gets to the end I really need to instigate this plan. I don't wanna lose the opportunity this time because my last vacation was less adventurous due to typhoon approaching into us that made my plan to hike Mt. Dalara to be cancelled and later found out it was only a false report. Jeez!
Unfortunately, the super-typhoon Yolanda hammered the Coron before we even get off there, given us the idea of how will the trail looks like or worse not to be passable.
I call out and assembled my gang (consist of my childhood friends and cousins) and roll out my plan to hike Mt. Dalara in the next day and they quickly thumbs up to this.
I spearheaded the group together with my cousins and childhood
friends, this will be our reunion after a very long time.
Around 10 in the morning we are packed and ready to go, from
the port of Coron we hopped in to the local transportation there which is tricycle (the tricycle in Coron is a bit
spacious compared to the usual one seeing in Manila, it can filled up to 8
passengers) then we'll bound to Mabentangen dam.
There were two trails to choose from when hiking Mt. Dalara, one was coming from Mabentangen dam and the other is in the Balisungan. The Mabentangen trail was slightly moderate hike, visible trail and safe assault but it will take a long hike, this trail is the most used because of its proximity to the Coron town proper unlike coming from the Balisungan trail, you have to travel long and passes trough elevated rough road which gave it a dangerous attempt. The trail is compose of pure assault with almost 90 degree elevation. If you want something hardcore hike then take this route.
At the feet of the mountain it was crowded with large bunch of trees that give shed to all hikers, before the first assault you could find small river flows that you can fill your bottles and somehow rest for a while or eat your lunch like what we did. We're just hungry as wolf!
After about half an hour, we continue our trek. There was little assaults along the way and some resting too. We don't exhaust ourselves too much, we just want to enjoy every bit of our togetherness again.
Because this trail is such a long hike, when you pass through the shedding forest then you will experience how widely open to scorching sun this another part of trail. Unfortunately the large part of this trail were not crowded by large trees, thus you need to have full armor from the blazing sun. Umbrella is a must-have so the sunglasses, trail water, trail food, and some essential stuffs that could help you from dehydrated and burned under the sun.
Before reaching the main campsite at the Globe satellite, the trails are vanished because of the grass grow so tall enough to hide the trail but you can pass through these grass just be careful to step to some large rocks that scattered around the grassy land,
Reaching the camp, we find this towering satellite down to ground and how this being distorted just like you stomped to an empty soda cans. I can't believe seeing this place tormented after the super typhoon Yolanda crashed our hometown. I approach the assigned security personnel there and we bring him some fruits we've packed. Our place was a small town that all the people know each other, so we introduce ourselves and it happens that he was a classmate of my father back in high-school, what an odd. He is very kind, very generous and able to help us build our camp because we don't even have a tent. He lead us where to build our DIY shelter.
The plan was to build our sleeping tent enough to protect us from fog and shivering and made our sleep at least comfortable. Others start gathering bamboos for the frame of our shelter and others start cooking our dinner. We ask him (security personnel) if we can cook rice in there wooden stove.
We borrow some wood sheets as our bed and some tarps as our roof. After we built our temporary home, we pinched some banana leaves as our plates use for dinner. Our dinner was like a mini boodle fight. Who would've ever forget the main event for this evening, the session! We light up a bonfire, enough to give us light and somehow protection from some wild animals that could sneak us into the midst of our resting. We sat in a circle motion and start the session as we've been all waiting. We even have sounds from our cell phones that completed our jamming. You can feel how the breeze of the evening wind compliments to your warm bodies while drinking.
The the morning came, what a beautiful life standing at the top, breathing healthy air while watching the sun rising into the horizon. Every time the sun rising, it's a sign for new blessing from God the Father.
When the breakfast was over, after we cleaned up our mess and bring the stuff back, we are now ready to descend. We start the descent before the sun gets too bright. It's more faster now, but need to take this very careful because some path is steep and slippy going down.
At last we've reached the Mabentangen dam and because we don't rent a tricycle to pick us up at the jump point, we need to walk some kilometers to see tricycle passes by. Tricycle very rare to come here because of rare passengers in this far as well.
There were two trails to choose from when hiking Mt. Dalara, one was coming from Mabentangen dam and the other is in the Balisungan. The Mabentangen trail was slightly moderate hike, visible trail and safe assault but it will take a long hike, this trail is the most used because of its proximity to the Coron town proper unlike coming from the Balisungan trail, you have to travel long and passes trough elevated rough road which gave it a dangerous attempt. The trail is compose of pure assault with almost 90 degree elevation. If you want something hardcore hike then take this route.
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| 1st stop: Just hungry! |
After about half an hour, we continue our trek. There was little assaults along the way and some resting too. We don't exhaust ourselves too much, we just want to enjoy every bit of our togetherness again.
 |
| 3rd stopped. |
Because this trail is such a long hike, when you pass through the shedding forest then you will experience how widely open to scorching sun this another part of trail. Unfortunately the large part of this trail were not crowded by large trees, thus you need to have full armor from the blazing sun. Umbrella is a must-have so the sunglasses, trail water, trail food, and some essential stuffs that could help you from dehydrated and burned under the sun.
Before reaching the main campsite at the Globe satellite, the trails are vanished because of the grass grow so tall enough to hide the trail but you can pass through these grass just be careful to step to some large rocks that scattered around the grassy land,
 |
| Bonfire! |
Reaching the camp, we find this towering satellite down to ground and how this being distorted just like you stomped to an empty soda cans. I can't believe seeing this place tormented after the super typhoon Yolanda crashed our hometown. I approach the assigned security personnel there and we bring him some fruits we've packed. Our place was a small town that all the people know each other, so we introduce ourselves and it happens that he was a classmate of my father back in high-school, what an odd. He is very kind, very generous and able to help us build our camp because we don't even have a tent. He lead us where to build our DIY shelter.
 |
| My gang! |
The plan was to build our sleeping tent enough to protect us from fog and shivering and made our sleep at least comfortable. Others start gathering bamboos for the frame of our shelter and others start cooking our dinner. We ask him (security personnel) if we can cook rice in there wooden stove.
We borrow some wood sheets as our bed and some tarps as our roof. After we built our temporary home, we pinched some banana leaves as our plates use for dinner. Our dinner was like a mini boodle fight. Who would've ever forget the main event for this evening, the session! We light up a bonfire, enough to give us light and somehow protection from some wild animals that could sneak us into the midst of our resting. We sat in a circle motion and start the session as we've been all waiting. We even have sounds from our cell phones that completed our jamming. You can feel how the breeze of the evening wind compliments to your warm bodies while drinking.
The the morning came, what a beautiful life standing at the top, breathing healthy air while watching the sun rising into the horizon. Every time the sun rising, it's a sign for new blessing from God the Father.
 |
| Photos credits to Richard Tiangco. |
When the breakfast was over, after we cleaned up our mess and bring the stuff back, we are now ready to descend. We start the descent before the sun gets too bright. It's more faster now, but need to take this very careful because some path is steep and slippy going down.
At last we've reached the Mabentangen dam and because we don't rent a tricycle to pick us up at the jump point, we need to walk some kilometers to see tricycle passes by. Tricycle very rare to come here because of rare passengers in this far as well.
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| Mt. Dalara summit! |
Fortunately we saw one tricycle waiting for passengers and we ran immediately to it and get us in quickly. At some point even this is a very tiring adventure, we're all happy that we are together again after a very long time. I guess we miss this thing, If I could have a lot of time I would definitely go back again and again.
We are born like this and we will live like this!
Hello, thank you for sharing your experience in hiking the Mt. Dalara, may I ask when was this? Will be in Coron on the 3rd week of October 2023 and Mt. Dalara is on my list, it seems like Mabentangen Dam is not on google maps and I read that easier trails was close already without indicating any reason. Did you hire a guide or is it necessary? and did you pay any fees hiking the mountain like guide, entrance, environmental fees, others? please advise. Hoping for your response, thank you and more power!
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