BABAG REVISITED

A year after my rappelling adventure I visited the limestone tower in Babag with my former companions -- Judge P and Lito, and new fellow-trekkers -- Gingin, Rene, and Ross.

Yeah, due to some miscommunication I was the only girl in the group because I was not supposed to join them that day. To make a long story short, my mom was attending a wedding where the judge was also one of the main sponsors that morning. He was accompanied by his wife, my best friend, Jane. My mom and Jane promptly called home -- four or five times --, disrupting my weekend beauty rest and begged, nagged, demanded I join them for the lunch reception -- Jane dangling that mountaineering trip with the judge at 2:00 p.m. I gatecrashed the wedding party attired in a midriff shirt that exposed my navel, denim skort (part shorts, part skirt), hiking shoes, and backpack. Mom was so embarassed she asked me to step out.

Judge P said it will be an easy hike. "We're going to do some orienteering. It's Gingin's idea," he said. "It's set for tomorrow, this small group of men is just the advance party that will set up the different points." Another miscommunication. It definitely was not an easy hike. It was much much more than a hike. We climbed rockwalls, holding on to balete tree roots and vines; crawled through cracks in the limestone walls, with hardly a hand-hold or foot-hold to cling to; slipped over badly eroded trails whose parched soil and stones gave under our weight; and got tangled in a trail festooned with intertwined vines and thorny brambles. Judge P wouldn't let us cut the vines because we might make the mistake of grabbing on to these should we slip.

To add insult to injury, Judge P announced to our new pals that we were traversing the "Lady's Trail" which was the easier one, than the steeper and tougher "Pedro's Trail." I didn't take offense. I did Pedro's Trail the first time we came here to rappell -- yeah, and I was bellyaching all the way to the top at that time, too. The Lady's Trail was no walk in the park either. Gingin and Ross were already drenched in sweat before we even got halfway. It was tougher on Ross -- he had a fear of heights and snakes. He was clearly out of his element -- outfitted in walking shoes, long-sleeved checkered shirt, and a native Marlboro hat. They took the Judge's word that it will be just an easy hike and that this is a day trip.

Going down is always the trickiest. We had to use leg muscles that hardly get any work-out in the city streets. We had to brace our bodies against the pull of gravity, occasionally failing at this and getting another bruise or scratch for our little slips. We tripped over loose stones, made a few wrong turns as the sun sank behind the mountains, ... and a thrill for me -- had to find our way back to civilization in darkness without flashlights with me leading the pack. My homing instincts (I was really thirsting for a cold bottle of Coke) got us through although I mistook the dried creek for the trail.

But what a feeling ... Rene summed it best as we paused for a liter of Coke and recharged our batteries at a nipa and bamboo shed: "I feel light -- like all the tension, stress and stiffness from work has disappeared." All laughed when I added, "actually they just transferred to our thighs."

I like best what Kate wrote about mountaineering: "While there, I knew that there were a lot of things to think about back home but in the mountains, they were just vague memories. They did not have the power to vex me."