«» Travel Notes: 001 ⸺ How to Get Your Parents to Climb the Highest Mountain in Your Country
+ Lessons I've learned from a year of hiking + My favorite questions
If you’re new here — HELLO. I’m Atom, and you’re reading my monthly Travel Notes email.
Why am I writing this on top of the weekly newsletter I send out on Mondays?
I’m a very introspective guy: I love to reflect, I love to write about my reflections, and I love to talk about my reflections.
So my hope is to reach the one, two, or three of you introspective, reflective, and deeply personal types who want to see underneath my Instagram pictures and reels, who are not only after the top 10 destinations of the Philippines but also the top 10 ways travel can change you, who crave for these introspective, reflective, and deeply personal conversations but rarely find them in customary social contexts.
Today’s theme is hiking.
Last week, I climbed the tallest mountain in the Philippines, Mt. Apo, with my family.
I’m assuming you opened this link because you want to do the same:
STEP 1: Wait for your parish priest who climbs Mt. Apo every year to invite you and your devout parents. Duh.
Our parish priest is Fr. Guy and my parents love him. He climbs Mt. Apo almost every year and in 2018 he invited me and Atew, my brother, to join him. This was my first major hike ever and it’s what introduced me to this life.
With life opening up this year after the pandemic, he extended the invitation to my entire family, including my parents.
If you don’t have a parish priest who has reached Mt. Everest’s base camp, goes to the gym as often as he goes to mass, and climbs Mt. Apo once a year, then our doors are open! Mary the Queen Parish is the place to be.
If neither you nor your parents are Catholic or devout and if moving churches is not your cup of tea, then I am sorry but you will find little value in the rest of this list. Fr. Guy is the only reason my family climbed Mt. Apo.
STEP 2: Say yes on their behalf by buying the plane tickets to Davao without their knowledge. Risks are necessary.
With the seed of possibility planted in my parents’ heads, I could tell that deep down they badly wanted to go but they were too afraid to make the decision themselves.
So I did what any good son would do.
I got my mom’s credit card and bought 6 round-trip tickets to Davao without telling anyone (I paid it back, of course).
STEP 3: In Mike Posner’s words, “Train for climbing mountains by climbing mountains.”
You can try doing yoga but when it comes to climbing mountains (and anything at that), specificity is king. You achieve what you want to achieve by doing what you want to achieve.
We started small first. Around the first week of November, Atew brought my parents to climb Mt. Batolusong (645 MASL) in Tanay, Rizal. Then two weeks later, I brought my parents to Mt. Batulao (811 MASL) in Nasugbu, Batangas.
Each mountain was an adventure and a core memory in its own right. Training doesn’t have to be dull and monotonous.
STEP 4: With a taste of the hiking experience and the depressing realization that you are remarkably unprepared, you can go shopping.
I drastically underestimated how expensive preparations could be, especially when you multiplied everything by 6. Here are just some of the things I can remember buying and their average cost:
Your expenses will vary greatly depending on your experience. If this is your first, then expect to be spending a lot. The good thing is most hiking gear can last a lifetime so your expenses on subsequent hikes will drastically decrease. For example, my parents likely spent upward of P20,000 just preparing for this hike whereas I spent as little as P1,000.
STEP 6: Message everyone you know and borrow any form of hiking gear they may own.
If you’re unsure about investing so heavily in your first hiking experience then I highly recommend reaching out to anyone you may know that has done any form of hiking.
Through this means we found our tent, sleeping bag, utensils, plates, and jackets.
My only advice is to keep tabs on what you borrow because things can get messy when you’re on the mountain.
STEP 6: Climb more mountains to test out your new gear.
Our culminating mountain and my parents’ very first overnight hike came in the form of Mt. Ulap (1846 MASL) in Itogon, Benguet.
My goal was to simulate the experience of hiking two days in a row, sleeping through cold winds in a tent, and climbing a mountain with 10-15kg bags.
This was where we first tested our tents, our bags, and our shoes. It’s incredibly important to break them in!
STEP 7: Make a spreadsheet laying out your itinerary.
Flying to hike is a logistical nightmare.
You need to think about where you will stay, you need to think about transporting your massive luggage (hiking bag+whatever other bags), you need to think about where to store those other bags while you’re hiking, you need to put work and house in order because the signal will be unreliable, you need to think about your dirty clothes shoes and gear when you return, you need to think about where you will sleep after you return, and you need to think about how you will bring this all back home.
I didn’t want my parents to worry about anything more so I made a spreadsheet for out itinerary. I could already see their eyes driven to manic anxiety and fear at the thought of climbing a mountain for three days.
STEP 8: Last-minute packing, last-minute shopping, last-minute panicking.
It has to be last minute. Who even packs ahead of time?
STEP 9: Climb.
Lessons learned from this hike and a year of hiking:
Go slow. It’s a long game. It’s not how fast you go but how little you slow down.
If you use walking sticks, set them at a height that reaches your solar plex. Otherwise, you will injure yourself as I did.
It’s lonely at the top. You’ll realize arriving first at the summit doesn’t feel so good as sharing the moment of completion with some good company.
No two hikes are the same. This was my second time at Mt. Apo and I felt like I climbed a completely different mountain. The greatest fault of our species is our tendency to think we know what will happen (got this from some book).
Learn as much as you can about your campsite as possible. 75% of hiking is camping. Most people worry about the strength of their legs and their aerobic endurance. Not enough thought goes into details like finding a water source, setting up a tent so water does not leak in, staying warm throughout the night, and setting aside space for trash. Our camp was a muddy mess that we were not prepared for.
Drink water! You’ll never appreciate water as much as on a hike. I like to have 3L with me at the start of any ascent or descent.
You can survive on a lot less than you think.
You don’t conquer a mountain, the mountain conquers you.
Your shoes can break anytime. It pays to have rugby, string, super glue, or an extra pair of hiking sandals at your disposal.
Bring vitamins! For some reason, I get feverish on the first night of any major hike. It disappears eventually but the feeling is terrible.
BONUS: I love questions and I love hikes because they offer me the perfect context to ask them.
Here are a few of my favorites:
If everything in your life went right where would you be in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, or 30 years?
Follow up: Revel in that feeling of success 30 years from now. . . Is there anything you can do right now to recreate that feeling? Not the successes. Just the feeling.
If you could relive one day of this year what day would that be?
If you could live anywhere in the world, what landscape would you choose? City? Beach? Mountain? A mix?
Tell me something I don’t know about you.
If you had to give a TED talk in the next 10 minutes, what would your topic be?
I love the questions!!