Hikers clean up mountains

HIKERS collect trash from Tayak Hill, a trekking destination recently becoming one of the favorites in Rizal, Laguna. PHOTO COURTESY OF BATANG RIZAL

TERNATE, CAVITE—Fifty mountains, around a thousand hikers, and more than a ton of trash collected in two days.

But to 43-year-old backpacker Rey Dante Agpawa, these were just numbers. In fact, mountain cleanups are “useless, unless the people are educated,” he said as he scrubbed away as much graffiti as he could from some rocks along the trail of Mt. Pico de Loro located in this town.

Agpawa, from Tanza, Cavite, joined the National Mountain Cleanup Day (NMCD), a two-day simultaneous initiative to clean up mountains across the country.

The NMCD was held first time on May 10 to 11, after Holy Week, a hiking peak season, and just before the onset of the rainy season.

Inspired by the International Coastal Cleanup Day and the Million People March against the pork barrel fund, the NMCD started as an online “spontaneous call” to raise awareness on mountain preservation.

The person behind it was 28-year-old doctor Gideon Lasco, from Los Baños, Laguna province, or more popularly known among backpacking enthusiasts as the blogger “Pinoy Mountaineer.”

Lasco was abroad when moved by the news of the devastation wrought by Super Typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) last November. Immediately, he tapped his online following to organize the NMCD.

“All I did was to coordinate (the event) but the initiative came from the hiking groups,” he said in a phone interview.

Various mountaineering groups (each with about 18 members) responded to the call that 50 mountains (34 in Luzon, and 8 each in Visayas and Mindanao) were covered by the NMCD.

Among the participants was a group of Japanese expatriates who volunteered to clean up Mt. Batulao, in Nasugbu, Batangas. Some local government units, in Misamis Oriental and Rizal in Laguna, also helped by providing the trucks for the garbage brought down by the mountaineers.

Project Pico

On Pico de Loro (366 meters above sea level), different Cavite-based hiking groups started another environment conservation effort. They called it Project Pico de Loro, which aside from holding cleanups, aims at educating hikers and the local communities about the Leave No Trace (LNT) principle.

The LNT is a seven-point guideline on outdoor conservation. It was adapted from the international Center for Outdoor Ethics, a “member-driven” center that raises awareness on how to reduce impact on the environment.

“It just means you don’t leave any mark,” said Project Pico de Loro coordinator Kenni Roy Alexandre Dones, 32, in a separate interview.

In support of the NMCD, Project Pico de Loro volunteers gave lectures about the LNT just before hikers left Pico’s jump-off point on May 10. They were able to lecture on 359 hikers (46 groups) about respect for wildlife, proper waste disposal, and respect for other trekkers.

They also collected a total of 35 kilos of trash during the NMCD, while some, like Agpawa, worked on removing graffiti left by vandals.

LNT is “the same principle as when you go swimming or joining an Edsa rally,” said Dones, who was first exposed to environment conservation when he was 12 by his father, Melanio Jr., who works at the Mines and Geosciences Bureau.

From Cavite, Dones said their group planned to hold LNT lectures on Mounts Manabu, Maculot and Batulao in Batangas, among the most frequently climbed mountains in the southern Tagalog region. They also plan to give lectures in schools in Cavite.

With the growing community of Filipino mountaineers, Lasco hoped for a repeat of the NMCD and envisioned it to be “an annual reminder of the importance of having clean mountains.”

He believed the way the mountains are preserved “reflects the state of a nation.”

But like Dones, Lasco agreed that nature preservation should not only take place during cleanup hikes.

“Every climb must be a clean climb,” he said, for the simple reason that “we cannot destroy the beauty that we see.”