Kiltepan Peak Sunrise --- Epic Fail

Call time was 4:30 AM in the morning the following day, good thing we managed to sleep earlier than expected the night before. With the help of our trusty mobile phones, alarms echoing 30 minutes before schedule. One by one dead bodies came to life. Today is the start of our Sagada Adventure and on top of the list was to see the famous Kiltepan Peak Sunrise. With much gusto to start the day right, all 10 adventure seekers was awake, alive and enthusiastic --- ready to face the freezing cold outside (sounds like your kinder garden morning exercise? lol).

Bagets at Kiltepan Peak: Smarla, Darwin, Cai, Byron, Marks, Ivan, Robbie,

Josh, Jay Ar, Nikki, Me, Heiz

Unfortunately, our ride from the guest house to Kiltepan wasn't ready until 15 minutes after under the breezy morning. The ride to the peak was uneventful and aside from the old country music playing on the radio, nothing much is burning in the air.

Kiltepan Peak is famous for its amazing sunrise, most tourist are drawn to this place to appreciate the magic of one of nature’s awesome display of beauty. Aside from the sunrise, it’s a great vantage point to see the Kiltepan Rice Terraces below, a structure made by the locals and forge through centuries by the indigenous people, the Igorots that serves as their primary source of both food and income.

Twilight the Movie

Did you have a chance to catch at least one of the three flicks of the Twilight Saga? Well if you haven’t, then it’s not your loss (haha). The area where our ride stopped looks like a scene in Forks from that vampire chick flick. It was foggy, pine trees are mossy and a small camp fire was set up to keep visitors warm while waiting for the mighty king sun.

Foggy morning at the peak

For us ten, instead of getting down and fight the cold while waiting for the sunrise, we choose to stay inside the jeepney and exchange ghost stories. Which we find very timely since that weekend was already “hallo’s eve” weekend. I thought I was the only one in the group who has a fair share of paranormal activities, but apparently there are three more in the group, making the session scarier than anticipated. An hour of exchanging scary stories have passed and we decided to cut the session and proceed at the viewing point.

Somewhere at the edge of the mountain, we found a spot perfect for the activity. It was already 5:32 AM when I had a glimpse of my watch and yet the thick fog/clouds are still hovering in front of us, blocking the supposedly perfect view. After an hour of waiting we gave up and just took some group shots instead to fill in the time. We already concluded that our sunrise viewing was an epic fail.

The Rebound

Although we accepted the fact that we will never experience sunrise at the peak, Kiltepan bounce back by clearing the view and presented an amazing rice terraces below. The rice terraces found below are bounded by three barangay: KILong, TEtep-an and ANtadao, thus the name Kiltepan (source: http://www.visitsagada.com/)

Kiltepan Rice Terraces

It was so far the most amazing site, another “P.I. Moment” so to speak. Upon seeing the rice terraces below, we can’t help but be amaze on a piece of Filipino creativity. Even the photos I took can’t give justice how beautiful the site is.

Despite the failed date with the morning sun, we went back to town happy. It’s not every day you see such amazing work of art. Along the road back to Sagada town proper we continued our scary story sessions, shared some photos and exchanges jokes kept as warm despite the morning breeze.

Time Check: SAGAS tour guides will pick you up at around 4-5 AM, so be sure you set your alarms correctly to prevent over sleep. The ride from Sagada Town to Kiltepan Peak will take 15-30 minutes.

Cash Flow: Jeep rentals cost 600 php that we divided amongst ourselves (10).

Best Practice: Go to the SAGAS office a day before you plan your sunrise trip at Kiltepan. Make sure you have booked a guide and a jeep for your trip.

Sole Food: You can check out Rock – Inn for some delicious breakfast, a little expensive compared to the ones in the town proper.

Sagada Series:

Preview of Things to Come: Sagada

Long Ride to Sagada, ways on how to get there and back.

Sunrise at Kiltepan Peak --- Epic Fail

Connect the Dots: Lumiang - Sumaging Cave Connection

Falls from North to South (Part 1)

Falls from North to South (Part 2)

Walking Tour: Echo Valley & The Hanging Coffins

Witnessing Traditon: Begnas (Rice Ritual)

Witnessing Traditon: Panagapoy

Food Trip in the Mountains: Sagada and Baguio