Besieged at Baler

Even today, Baler remains besieged … by weather, mountains, the biggest ocean in the world.  But with weather wisdom, terrain awareness and the patience to turn back and try again another day, you can break the siege.

And remember, the Crispy Buntot is delicious.

 

  

  

  

   

There are three routes across the Sierra Madre mountains to Baler.

 

Short and Fast

Through the Bongabon-Baler pass.  Short and fast.  Squeeze through the gap between solid cloud above and even more solid mountains below.

[Captions available, mouse over each image.]

  

    

  

  

   

   

    

   

   

   

   

  

  

  

  

   

    

If the gap closes, you are suddenly flying blind below mountain peaks.  The flight might get really short and fast.

 

 

    

  

  

  

   

   

   

  

  

    

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

    

    

  

  

  

  

 

Commit if you can see the coast on the far side.  Then think…

…  of future comments on Facebook about your pathetic genetic material, if you splatter on the mountain.

  

Once committed, you can’t abort.  Turning or climbing blind into a lowering ceiling is Russian Roulette — high terrain all around.

  

You could also climb over the clouds and cross at 7,500 or 9,500 feet.  But unless you’re flying a MiG, towering Cu can build faster than your airplane can climb.  

  

The Scenic Route

Through the Pantabangan river valley, to Baler’s coastal plain.  Lower mountains, higher ceilings … and more traffic.  I once zipped by a Cessna 172 here, opposite heading.  No radio contact.  Hard to spot, see below:

  

You can do something here that you can’t do in the mountain passes.  You can turn around. 

 

The End-Around 

Southeast through Laur valley to Dingalan Bay on the Pacific Ocean, then up the Aurora coastline north to Baler.  Big detour. 

  

You’ll burn a lot of fuel.

  

   

   

   

Past the mountains, a magnificent coastal plain opens up.  The airport is invisible until you are close in.

  

  

   

   

  

         

  

  

  

 

  

  

   

    

   

   

   

   

     

   

On the ground, you keep one eye on the sky, one eye on the clouds, and one eye on the mountains, lest they move towards each other and ruin your day.

  

 

    

  

  

  

  

   

  

   

   

  

  

  

 

Sierra Madre weather factory. Gap between cloud and mountain at left where we flew through.

  

  

  

  

Last February 28, Carlo climbed us to 9,200 feet, trying to beat the clouds.  We just couldn’t out-climb the weather, and suddenly we were boxed in, cumulus towers all around us.

Energy similar to a thermonuclear detonation had lifted millions of tons of moisture into white cotton skyscrapers.  They could flip upside down in unplanned aerobatics over forested mountains.  Without wings.

We anxiously turned in a big circle, besieged by silent, lethal white monsters reaching thousands of feet above us.  I banked steeply through a gap, seeing green fields of central Luzon far ahead.  We fled, just 11 nautical miles from Baler airport.

  

I put the airplane in a dive, northwest to the Pantabangan reservoir, to try again.  Traced the river east.  Down low now.  Dark.  Rain.  Darker.  Clouds. 

Hopeless. 

Carlo turned us around under a ceiling barely 1,000 feet AGL.  Mist, drizzle, low visibility.  We were only 15 nautical miles from Baler.

 

(Five weeks later, we retraced the old GPS track and took pictures of where we turned back.  You can even practice your flight on Google Earth.)

 

 

 

  

  

  

  

    

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

  

  

    

  

  

We were way down deep in that valley, that day we turned back.  Except that the visibility was 20 times less.

    

    

Going home, picturesque Pantabangan sprawled below us, that damn eagle at our 8 o’clock high making sure we were bugging out.

  

  

On the rice paddies, the wind rippled silver sheets of water under the rice crop.  Impossible to photograph, and only a pilot, and God, can see that.

Even when you can’t break the weather siege, Baler is beautiful, coming or going.  I am torn between raving about Baler, and keeping it secret.

  

  

        

Posted from Bangkok, August 28, 2009.  

Carlo’s Birthday.  Happy Birthday, Carl!!

     

  

     

  

  

  

  

   

    

  

  

     

   

   

 

  

  

     

    

    

    

     

     

     

.     

     

     

 

  

.

Read Full Post »

Isabela

The mountains, weather and routes at Baler were learning opportunities for us.  They stretched our wings, our decision-making and our experience base. 

More important, the Crispy Buntot is great!

 

  

  

  

Fast-forward seven months.  December, just after Christmas.  Carlo and I vegetated on the beach at Vigan, wondering where to fly next on our Yuletide flying holiday.

 

As a rippled sunset glowed over the South China Sea, we got a text message from Ruth:

Merry Christmas!  She and her family were in Baler for the holidays.

  

  

     

      

Carlo and I sat up.  Baler!  Of course! 

It was the amihan season.  Drizzly northeast trade winds on the Pacific coast, lots of surf action.  Baler was way across Luzon.  It would be a coast-to-coast flight.  But that’s what airplanes are for.

We left at sunrise, refueled at La Union.  Climbed to 8,500 feet across Baguio, then doglegged across the Puncan, Caraballo and Sierra Madre mountains to Pantabangan and Baler.

  

  

  

    

    

   

  

  

   

  

     

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

    

      

    

    

     

We were fetched at the airport by an irrepressible lady with the utterly charming name of Isabela.

Isabela!  Carlo and I loved her instantly, even if she was a bit haughty at first, as a proper lady should be.  After she got to know us  more she became outgoing and more, er, demonstrative.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

   

 

   

   

      

  

  

  

  

    

    

    

    

 

Since Carlo and I left Vigan at sunrise, we attacked the home cooked lunch at Baler like pilots home from the wars.

  

The movie Baler! was sweeping awards at the Manila Film Festival.

We visited the church where the Spanish soldiers were besieged for nearly a year, unconvinced that Spain had surrendered the entire country to the Americans  months before.

 

  

We toured the two-storey Baler Museum.  Beside centuries-old tribal artifacts were costumes and props from the movie.  There is a rich photo collection that spans more than a century of photography at Baler.

 

 

    

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

  

  

Dinner at Bays Inn, right on the beach, featured Crispy Buntot, like crispy pata except it was not, well, the pata. 

The next morning a Pacific Ocean sunrise, barely showing through rainclouds, spotlighted the horizon and capped a great 24-hour journey.

  

  

In the past 24 hours we had flown coast-to-coast right across Luzon, seen the sun rise and set at both Vigan on the South China Sea and at Baler on the Pacific Ocean.  Not bad for a small Cessna.

  

It was raining when Ruth and her family took us to the airport.  Isabela called Clearance Delivery while we pre-flighted the airplane. 

 

Except that the master switch was off.    

  

  

Carlo spiralled us up in an instrument climb to VFR on top.  Later he studied the track with interest — the wind had drifted us closer to the mountains throughout his spiral climb.

 

 

     

Ruth and her family drove off for Manila.  The airport caretaker told them to wait, since our airplane would surely return because of bad weather.  Ruth firmly told the driver to go.  She knew the pilots well, she said.

  

When Carlo and I landed at Omni, Isabela and her parents were driving down the Sierra Madre into the Central Luzon plain.  We haven’t seen her since.  She sent us pictures of her birthday party last month.

  

  

Posted from Bangkok, August 21, 2009.

Ninoy Aquino’s 26th anniversary.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

.

Read Full Post »

Baler!

The pilot who crosses the Sierra Madre range into the coastal plain at Baler Bay is well-rewarded with a stunning vista.  Baler is a beautiful place.  Sheltered by mountains, it is competitive and contemporary without losing its refreshingly rural identity.

  

   

   

  

  

  

  

    

    

                                

                       

      

  

  

  

  

 

 

  

        

    

   

     

   

   

  

    

  

Carlo and I made it to Baler for the first time in May, 2008.  I can’t recall how we crossed the mountains, but it must have been hairy, because this awesome cellphone photo is from that flight.

   

      

  

      

On the coastal plain we found the perfectly serviceable but nearly abandoned Juan C. Angara airport.  Located inland at the town of San Luis, the airport used to be serviced by scheduled SEAir flights.

  

 

 

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

     

    

   

  

   

Baler is the hometown of a dear old friend who I had not seen for years.  

Ruth is a former work colleague with a terrific work ethic — 14-hour days, a persistent passion for excellence, zero tolerance for mediocrity.  The type of person who, when upset, might conquer a small country. 

I loved it, since she reported to me.  If it were the other way around I would probably have assassinated her.

Living in Manila now, Ruth hails from Baler.  I texted her that Carlo and I were flying to her hometown, and she urged us to visit her parents’ house. 

  

We flew into the airport, eight kilometers inland from the Pacific coast. 

The 1,100 meter concrete runway is long enough for turboprops, but, sadly, scheduled airline flights have been shot down by the economy.

   

  

 

We took a tricycle to Sabang beach.  This is the site of the annual Aurora Surfing Cup, perhaps the most prestigious surfing competition in the Philippines.

Captain Kilgore (Robert Duvall) “Loved the smell of napalm in the morning” while surfing this beach under enemy fire, in the iconic 1979 movie, Apocalypse Now, shot on location here.

    

 

Carlo and I just had to sample that surf for the record.  But we didn’t have time nor equipment for the real stuff, so. . .  .

 

  

We had quite a hunt for Ruth’s parents’ house, since there are no street numbers.  Instead, you ask for people by name.  After circling the town for half an hour by tricycle, I finally realized I had to ask around for Ruth’s maiden name.

The tricycle driver slapped his head and exclaimed that he was related to her!

 

      

It was uncanny.  Her mom Ilovita looks and sounds just like Ruth, gone back to the future in a more senior iteration of Ruth herself.  Ilovita is a school teacher and administrator, an historian, and curator of Museo de Baler.

Clearly, the work ethic is inherited too.

  

We chatted for a few minutes.  I listened, mildly incredulous, to mostly tall tales that Ruth had obviously told them about me as a boss.

It was Mothers Day, 2008.

  

  

I would finally meet Ruth herself in Baler seven months later.  The reunion would be overshadowed by another entrancing woman, though.

  

  

Posted from Bangkok, August 19, 2009

Feast Day of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, patron saint of the Baler church, site of the infamous siege of Baler.

Birth date of Manuel L. Quezon in Baler, later President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

.

Read Full Post »