The first time I laid my eyes on You

What was your first hike/trek?

Before we had our fancy lingos like “major hike”, “dayhike”, we had that fantasy mountain that we’d love to climb. For some it would be a picturesque and easy trek like Mt Gulugod Baboy (Batangas), or Mt Ulap (Benguet). For some, it would be how some of us refer to as “harkor” (hard core in English) climbs like Mt Halcon, Sicapoo, or even G2 (Guiting-Guiting).

View from Mt Ulap

Mt Ulap’s Gungal rock

It’d be safe to assume that for most of us, we climbed less intense mountains like Pamitinan (Rizal Province), Binicayan (Rizal Province) or even Balungao (Pangasinan Province).

What do you think was my first climb? (Drop a comment below if you can’t see the embedded poll)

First thoughts
If not all, for most of us, our first feeling during the start of a climb is excitement. We look forward to many things about climbing: the view along the way; the friends strangers you meet that will turn into friends after you descend; the camaraderie we’ll have during and after this; and maybe for most of us, the view from the top and the feelings that go with it.

On the other side of the spectrum, there would be mostly fear (“Will I be safe?”) and skepticism (“Am I strong enough?”).

But as one of the most famous climbers of our time (if not all time), Sir Edmund Hillary said:

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”

This is not a picture of them (Hillary and Norgay) at the summit of Mt Everest. This picture was taken down the trail. Sir Edmund refused for his picture to be taken on the summit, instead, he only took a picture of Tenzing.

A good thing to learn about Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay is their humility. For their expedition’s quest to summit the highest in the world, both Edmund and Tenzing never told the world who summited the mountain first. Climbing difficult mountains like Mt Everest is a TEAM effort, not only by one person.

Euphoria

We cannot conquer a mountain, we can only summit it. We cannot defeat a mountain, we can only mount it. We can only push hard, harder than we ever did to see whats at the summit. But upon reaching the summit, the reward is not only the grand view in the horizon, but more so, the feeling from within. We surpass our limits, our fear, our doubts.

And when we lay waste to our negativity and let go of that doubt, it becomes the first step to adventure. Out of your comfort zone and into a new world that will blow your mind away in a myriad of ways.

Safe travels everyone!