June 14, 2015; the next day after our Mt. Timbak adventure; my next assignment was Mt. Kabuyao… the place where the popular ‘Sito La Presa’ is located.
The mountain could be access by vehicles… yes, there was concrete road leading to the top of the mountain! At first, we were almost tempted to take a taxi to the mountain, but since our first intention in going to the north is to “stretch our legs”, we opted to walk from the police station at Greenvalley. We started trekking at around 9:45 AM and reached waiting shed of Sitio Digdigwayan where we were told by the locals that there is a “shortcut trail” that would shorten our road travel by approximately 2 kilometers. The shortcut trailhead is located just three meters after the waiting shed. The trail was quite steep but punctiliously manageable. At least we were able to experience ‘genuine’ trekking in the mountain.
After gaining an altitude of 137 meters, the shortcut trail once again met the road. Climbers should be very careful with the shortcut trail because it could be muddy and slippery, and it is infested with Limatik (along the trail, all of a sudden, Venoch asked me if the crawling ‘thing’ in his shoes was a leach… it was a limatik!). We then pushed further on the road and reached another shortcut trail, two kilometers before the summit. The trail was very steep, slippery and with lots of unstable rocks. I decided to deal first with the 50-meter high shortcut trail but upon seeing the very dangerous upper end (almost 90-degree non-vegetated loose-soil); I went down and told Venoch and Eljhay to walk through the pavement instead. We reached the summit at 10:30 and immediately proceed in front of the two radars to take souvenir pictures.
After exploring the summit, we proceeded to the road junction to ‘la presa’ where there is a lot of makeshift shops and stalls selling souvenirs to the numerous number of tourists to look for a place to dine. However, upon seeing the place, we opted to consume the cookies and bread in our bag and rest for a while in preparation for our climb to the nearby Mt. Sto. Tomas.