The Philippine Outdoors

It’s been a month that I’m out of the saddle due to typhoons onset every weekends. Weekend is my only time to bike and I was quite unlucky that every weekend, there’s an onset of typhoon. However, I still consider myself lucky considering how typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, brought havoc to the islands. While those 2 typhoons devastated most part of Luzon province, my family and I are safe from home. I opted to stay home as I feel won’t totally enjoy riding in the rain, just like my September 5th ride . Thus, after hearing the news that typhoon Pepeng went out of Philippine territory, and brought no more rain starting yesterday, Friday, I decided to pack-up my gears and be ready for a short and quick saturday ride. I have to do it quick because I have another paintball session with my colleague at Teradyne , on the same day.

When your riding alone, you wish you have a company to take pictures when youre bombing the trail.

The day starts at 5:45AM and drove towards University of the Philippines at Los Banos, Laguna. It’s a 1 hour and 15 minutes car ride from home at Imus, Cavite. Traffic in the morning is almost negligible, but the automobile’s queue at expressway toll gate is quite long.

There’s a lot of downhill trail at Makiling. Mudspring, rock garden, Airline, Crystal spring trails, and there’s one more which I already forgot its name. But, for the rainy season, Mudspring trail is the ideal choice and this is the trail that I choose for the day. For cross-country riders, going up at mudspring is like nirvana. But for downhillers, it is like a purgatory, where you have to push your bike for at most 1 hour up to the bukohan store. But for cross country riders who pedalled all the way to the top, it’s at most 30 minutes of pure uphill ride. But going down, is a heaven for adrenalin junkies who let the cross-country riders eats their mud.

Mudspring trail is rocky all throughout. The rock sizes ranges from small to medium. But size, is a bit subjective and understatement.

But wait, there’s a bonus after the usual ride. You can pass through a drop right after the mudspring guardhouse. There are still a few small jumps more, table top, staircases and 1 last drop near the football field. So if in case, you don’t know these bonuses, I suggest you ride with the usual suspects of downhillers here, “The Makiling Team Gravity“.

UPLB’s College of Forestry and Natural Resources arch. You’ll pass through here if you’re going to Mudspring trail.

rock samplers of mudspring trail

A view of the trail from station 5.

The bukohan with “you know who?”. It’s one of the cheapest buko you can have.

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