Perrysonal

'Fall down seven times, get up eight.' I wonder why mountains in the province of Tarlac are too tough to conquer. There are the mountains of San Jose Circuit, Mounts Tangisan, Bunkol Baka and Kawayan, and then there’s Mount Damas. Damas lives up to its moniker of being small but terrible as it is a tough mountain to climb. My group’s conquest of Damas was really a very memorable one. It was a clean-up climb, as we decided to participate in the 4 th National Mountain Clean-up Day. It was a day hike (extended day hike actually). The hike took us sixteen hours to finish, with some of us sustaining injuries, including myself. I experienced muscle cramps at one point during our descent. For the record, Damas was the hardest climb I had ever done and the second longest after Mount Ugo. Some of our companions are from Camiling, so we had to fetch them on our way to the jump-off point. We made a stopover at a gasoline station for a bathroom break while w...