PINOYAPACHE GOES BACK TO BASICS

I HAVE BEEN CLIMBING MOUNTAINS and hilly regions in the ‘80s here in my country but I do not consider myself a mountaineer. I do not know then that mountaineering clubs were already existing as early as 1970 and these guys have challenged and assaulted remote and difficult mountain ranges. You only know of this from tidbits of information from newspapers and from monthly leisure magazines, usually already so outdated. News travel so slow on those long forgotten era. Pre-Cambrian times.

When mountaineering became popular in the ‘90s, the University of the Philippines Mountaineers formulated the creation of the Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC) as a prerequisite for induction of members into their organization. Later on, it was adopted and shared to the different mountaineering clubs and the National Mountaineering Federation of the Philippines, the forerunner of the MFPI. Before or during that time, I was now a member of the Cebu Mountaineering Society and I have not heard of that. News does travel slow in that era. Jurassic times.

 

Fast forward to Facebook era. People flock to the mountains because their friends posted their exploits in social media and these places are now very accessible because it was pioneered by earlier mountaineers. While it may be good for local tourism, practicing the finer ways of engaging in leisure activities on the mountains are simply lacking and needs proper guidance and education. You see this all the time in social media: accidents, wrong attire, getting lost, rescued, retrieved, hiking on the wrong time, grassfires, unpreparedness, ignorance, garbage here, garbage there, garbage everywhere.

While the main purpose of the BMC before was more on preparedness, health and safety but, this time, the mountaineering community needed to protect the very playgrounds from these hordes of uneducated individuals. And so it became mandatory – with greater emphasis – to inculcate the Principles of the Leave No Trace to the new mountaineers as a side dish to the BMC. No, make that both the main menu. You would have to swallow both as a personal advocacy. It does not stop from there. You will ride the social media phenomena and educate people through there. Not by bashing but by intellect.

People, clubs, organizers and even government agencies are working against time in the hope of reversing a dangerous trend that social media unintentionally provided to a lot of people. One of these organizations is the Climbers League for Ideal Mountaineering and Balanced Environmental Responsiveness or simply known as CLIMBER. It is not a mountaineering club but an advocacy of long-time friends who would like to make the outdoors enjoyable and safe. They are based in the National Capital Region but they could be requested to teach and share BMC and LNT to the rest of the country.

Last July 22 and 23, 2017, CLIMBER came down to Cebu City to bring their knowledge and their resource speakers to educate members of a newly-established mountaineering club of Shearwater Health, a business-process outsourcing company based in the Cebu Business Park. CLIMBER, for most of the time, organize their own BMC in locations around NCR but, sometimes, on a few occasions, conduct BMC and other training on request just like they did in Romblon last 2016. Their instructors are some of the best in their own fields. Let us name them one by one:

 

Regie Pablo. He needs no introduction. Everybody knows who he is. For those who do not know it yet, he is the fourth Filipino to scale Mount Everest. He did it on May 16, 2007 and lost the endmost joint of a thumb for his effort, through frostbite. He is also recognized as the one who inspired the mountaineering community to form the Philippine Everest Expedition Team so it could place our country’s flag on top of the highest peak on Earth, which we did in 2006. He will be handling Introduction to High Altitude Mountaineering.

Erick Suliguin. A product of the earliest BMC batch of CLIMBER, went on to seriously pursue advanced learning in LNT at its Center of Education in the USA and came back to transform CLIMBER into a very credible outdoors learning institution. He is a holder of the LNT Master Educator, a distinction of being the only one among three Filipinos who has this learning to teach LNT here, the two being US-based. His presentation would touch on the Principles of LNT. 

 

Ronald “Fabs” Fabon. One of the most versatile resource speakers for CLIMBER. He could discuss anything relating to mountaineering and the outdoors. His long experience and wide array of skills made him very valuable to the mountaineering community. He had sharpened those skills when he was then a member of the MFPI Educational Committee. He would touch on many topics for this BMC and it is about Planning and Preparation, Gear and Equipment, Map Reading, and Knot Tying.

Ramon “Jay Z” Jorge. With CLIMBER from the very start of its inception. Currently is the administrator of their social media pages and also handles their marketing thrusts. While he has undergone many training, people here in Cebu remembered him only as a participant of the Philippine Independence Bushcraft Camp in 2012. His pioneering inclusion of survival as a subject in a BMC was revolutionary. He will be discussing Introduction to Survival.

The Boy Scouts Camp in Kalunasan was chosen as the venue. I happened to be there to support CLIMBER, along with the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild. There were eleven participants from Shearwater Health and they were augmented by people from Camp Red, to include me. I have never sat in a BMC before and I have no certificate to show that I have participated in one. Maybe this time I will have one to attach and show in my curriculum vitae.

In case you might know, this is one of the ironies of my life because I am often invited as a resource speaker in many BMCs for topics which are not found in their regular lectures. By the way, all the things my peers and I did during those Jurassic times were just common sense and it found its way in the pages of the BMC. I heard it many times from different resource speakers of many BMCs I have been in to. I learned these rudiments informally, long before it was called a BMC, and the CLIMBER event would just formally place an icing on my cake. 

After singing the National Anthem before the Philippine Flag, Jay Z opened the BMC to the participants on the first day, July 22. For a whole day, Fabs began his topics from the pre-climb meeting to choosing equipment to pacing to navigation. After dinner, Regie talked about his experience with the Philippine Everest Expedition Team which brought him to snowy regions, training and acclimatizing himself for the big day in 2006. His success came in 2007 and he did it alone. So ended the first day.

Giving Regie support is his closest friend and fellow Everest expedition team member, Larry “Hillboy” Honoridez, who came while he was in the middle of his topic. Regie and Hillboy talked about old times. Joining him in their circle were Jay Z, Erick, Fabs, Billy Anciro, Randy Salazar, Jonathaniel Apurado and me. The festive company ended only after the first few hours of the next day. I stayed with the participants in the BSP Camp and slept in my hammock.    

The second day, July 23, started after breakfast. Fabs began the part about knot-tying and ropework and culminated with the part about the post-climb meeting. After lunch, Erick took up the cudgels and discussed LNT for a whole afternoon. After dinner, and not part of the program, I found myself talking about the Cebu Highlands Trail so as to inspire the participants. Then Jay Z gets his turn exposing the participants to a survival mindset.

The BMC that CLIMBER introduced to Cebu was the 19th one ever since they existed in 2015 and the first one that I attended as a participant. CLIMBER has taken the right advocacy: Outdoors Education. With their effort, they were able to educate a lot of people relating to the different outdoor hobbies, most notably, of mountaineering. The mountains possess a different environment and unpredictable weather patterns. The BMC guides you to enjoy and cherish these places safely and help in the conservation efforts thru LNT.

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