I wanna jammin' with you: Mount Lanaya, Alegria, Cebu

I am keeping my expectations at a reasonable level. I thought that I could blog, bike, climb, work, and have a fairly normal social life all at the same time but it is just a little bit too. Spending most of my waking time procrastrinating does not help very much either. It took me so long to blog about this trip that this one is almost a throwback.

But I am learning new things even if I am too busy procrastrinating. For one, I have recently learned how to read topographical maps. And please allow me to indulge with my newly learned skills by posting a few maps in the post. By the way, I am a recent convert to OpenStreetMaps.

I now know that those wiggly lines on a map represent a change in elevation. If the wiggly lines are closer together, the ascent (or descent, depending on where you wanna start) is more drastic. That is because each line indicates a certain distance.

So if the map tells you that the five-meter increments are gonna be close together, that’s a problem. It’s always easier to gain five meters of elevation every half a kilometer as opposed to gaining five meters in, let’s say, every two meters. I know it’s confusing but if you are as confused as I am you will understand it. Or you can just search “how to read topographical map”s on YouTube. By the way, those wiggly lines are called contour interval by geeks. I call them wiggly lines.

On the map you'll find right after this text (which most people don't bother to read), Mt. Lanaya is south-west of that blue spot (which is some sort of a lake by the way). I did my ascent on the eastern part, along that track that passes by the lagoon. Or lake. It is much more difficult to do it on the west side, I guess that’s what they call Legaspi Trail. I always prefer to do it the easy way. If there was a bus going to the peak I’d take it.

The only problem I have reading maps is I am very good at locating places theoretically, but I still get lost when I'm out there. I guess what my friend told me is true, I have problems placing myself in the real world.

You can find Sun Xi Mountain Resort on this map. It’s right there where you can see blue scribbles. Those are GPS tracks I don’t know how OpenStreetMap works but I guess they turn established GPS traces into tracks.

These photos of me are taken by my guide who works at Sun Xi. I couldn’t thank him enough.