I once believed that there were only 2 seasons here in the Philippines: Summer and Rainy seasons. But spending a night at Mt. Ulap made me realize that Winter is possible in our country too. ?

Mt. Ulap is located in the Northern highland part of Luzon: Itogon, Benguet, a province where you can also visit the Summer Capital of the Philippines, Baguio City. It was coined as that because of the large number of tourists during summer because everybody was after its cold weather. And yes, we had a short side trip at that place (which is my very first time): Baguio Market and Burnham Park.

 

Ulap is a Filipino word for Cloud and Mt. Ulap is also famous for its scenery with ‘sea of clouds’, that’s why we were expecting to witness such. And if you are following my blog, you already know that I am very excited to experience that majestic scene. But again, we fail. But that didn’t mean we were less than happy compared to our previous climb.

Benguet is an 8 hour-drive away from our place (more or less, depending on the traffic), so we started the road trip night before the climb.

We reached the registration area / jump-off around 8AM and started the trail at 9AM after a short activity and warm up, hosted by our travel agency.

I decided to contact a travel agency this time because I was not in the mood to know the requirements, places to eat, and all other necessities a traveler should know to an unfamiliar place. And also, I was considering the expenses between DIY tour and having a travel agency; it turned out that the additional payment for travel agency wasn’t that big.

We were a total of 17 backpackers: 12 from our group, 1 coordinator, and 2 pairs of joiners.

The first lap is, of course, a warm-up but already trying to push us to our warm-up’s limit. ?

I am not going to discuss anymore our step by step journey to the summit. So, here are the scenery as we climb up higher:

Some part of Mt. Ulap reminded me of Mt. Batulao because of how worn out they are.

Before we go to the views at the summit, you should know that there are 2 peaks before reaching the final summit:

 

We reached Campsite 2, which is very near the summit, at around 3PM. Imagine how exhausted we were with that almost 7 hours trek. ?

We started to build our tent to have some rest before climbing the summit and witness the sunset there.

Due to exhaustion and very cold weather, 2 of us did not join them, ?. Yes, I was one of the 2. ? But I was able to witness the majestic sunset at the campsite.

Meanwhile, here are their shots at the summit during sunset:

If you think I gave up climbing the very summit, you’re wrong. ? After some breakfast, we went to the top and this time witness the sunrise. It was more majestic for me.

I almost forgot to share the view of our night sky (captured by our friend) at the campsite, which has a degree of 7 Celsius that night, here it is (click the picture to clearly see the night sky):

We started the trek (traverse) down Mt. Ulap at around 8AM. And it took us 3 hours to reach the bottom. Traversing Mt. Ulap was easy but the scenery were still breathtaking. Here the photos on our way down the mountain:

There you go. I hope these insights motivated you to visit a mountain too, if not this mountain. Ever since I started climbing, I realized that reconnecting with the nature is important part of life. We need to see these awesome creation of God once in a while. There are reasons why He created the nature that way and us too. They are vital part of life and therefore need to be taken care of and be preserved.

Thank you Lord, for this awesome experience. 🙂

P.S. The photos above were taken by these fun loving people:

P.P.S. If you are planning a trip here and is looking for a travel agency, I am highly recommending Tiff’s Travel and Tours. Aside from being very accommodating, they are fun-loving with a touch of TLC.

Also, if you’d like to see the footage of our adventure, you may click this link: Majestic Overnight at Mt. Ulap