Mount Labo
- Mount Labo
- 1544 m.
- Prominence: 15xx m
- Luzon island, Philippines.
- Location: North 14.01308, East 122.78779 (GPS)
- Difficulty: (YDS) class 3
- Climbed April 22, 2023.
Mount Labo
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How to get there:
The nearest town is Daet. We stayed there and arranged
for pickup early morning by Angeles Malate,
he may be contacted at https://www.facebook.com/angeles.malate .
Daet is a few hours by car, north of Naga City. Naga has
an airport with flights from Manila as well as Cebu.
Route description:
Backtracking a bit down the concrete road leading to the house of
Angeles Malate, there is a fork going left. One may take a shortcut
across some short grassy fields (on a small trail) to connect with
this road. Continue right along this road as it starts going downhill.
The concrete surface ends and the somewhat rougher (4WD) road continues to
descend, then making a right curve when crossing a small river on a bridge.
This old road now continues several kilometers, but looks more like a trail
after crossing a river. There are some parallel concrete structures in the river,
one can easily jump from one to the next, then scramble a narrow wall at the end
to finish the crossing.
There are 4 more river crossings, all may be done by easy rock hopping, at least
is summer time. The trail does have leaches that one should try to avoid. You
will bypass a small landslide by first ascending, then doing a (YDS) class
3 downclimb, short with good root handholds. After about 12 kilometer, the
trail arrives at an established camp site.
From here, the trail ascends a ridge, there is a small descending section, than
more uphill, quite a small, narrow trail, but having no big difficulties.
Comments / Trip report:
We arrived in Daet from Naga in the afternoon. We had
booked two room there for two nights. We sort of believed that
this would be a hotel, however, an AirB&B type accommodation, ie.
renting part of a house, was what itt turned out to be.
We agreed on a pick-up time at 0500, however already at 0445, I got
a message from Angeles - outside. We had a 45 minute interesting ride
in this motor bike with a side wagon that could seat 3.
After a simple registration at Maletes house, the guide arrived and we
were off walking at 0600.
Despite a fairly short distance if measured straight to the peak, this trail
turned out to be 18.5 kilometer one way. We arrived at the summit 1130.
It was possible to determine (by hand level) that the neighbor peak is about 15 meter lower.
We left at 1215, a long trek back. I discovered (and removed) about 10-15 leaches, one
had gotten all the way to my face, but none of them succeeded in their mission.
Back at 1730, certainly a full day. We said goodbye to Angeles and returned to
town with the same motorbike.