Packed!

After a dreadfully long work week, I will be off to the mountains tomorrow! Yihaaa! I've been looking forward to go hiking because I've been stressed lately. I need to be in the mountains!

Me and some friends are doing the Makiling Day Hike Traverse again, (more commonly referred to as MakTrav by mountaineers). We'll start our ascent from Sto. Tomas Batangas and get down at UPLB. It's going to entail a whole day of hiking but I don't mind! I'm just happy to go outside again. The MakTrav trail has tons of beautiful trees, interesting species and tons of ravines. I really hope I remember the trail and don't get us lost. Hihi.

I've finished packing - my least favorite activity when going away, but it had to be done. (I think I've said that quite a number of times in the past already, haha!). While I was putting everything I need in a tiny backpack, I am again reminded of how hard I worked to be able to gather all the hiking essentials. Trust me, it took years of dreaming and hard labor to collect everything. My gears aren't all that expensive but quality is amazing (if it can withstand me, it must be heavy-duty, haha!) My best investment so far are the bags from Deuter. It's really durable! I'm not careful with my gears and I tend to just squeeze everything in and force it to close up but it hasn't given up on me yet.

When I started hiking, I just used my school bag - a green backpack from JanSport, then eventually switched to a bigger pack from Montanara for longer trips. I didn't have any waterproof pouches and relied on SM plastics to secure all my clothes (the thick plastic kept them all dry, so thank you SM!). My shoes were the ones I used for street soccer (which helped me get through the slippery terrain). I didn't have a hydration pack or water bottles either so I carried plastic containers all the way up and going down. The Leave No Trace policy was successfully embedded in my mind by our club moderator from AMCI. Up to this day, I feel disgusted when people just leave their garbage in the mountain. I usually bring down some trash when I go hiking, even if it's just a wrapper of candy. I think if all hikers did the same thing, we can help clean up a mountain. :)

I'm still lacking a few equipment (I want a GPS, Go Pro, a new SP/WP Camera perhaps?) but these will do for now. With or without a GPS, my mind is firm that come what may, I will have a blast! I am getting older so I should stop spending on gears and start saving for the future. Eeeks!

Happy adventurous weekend everyone!