After successfully negotiating the North and South peak independently the next logical thing was to traverse the mountain connecting the two summits.
There wasn’t much information to be found about this, but I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to find our way across from the North to the South peak. It involves negotiating a ridge that is around 1 kilometre in length. There is a very very steep slope leading down from the North peak towards the ridge, there is a defined path going down there, so just follow that and you can’t go far wrong. It’s thick jungle to either side os you are pretty much on it or off it. There is a tricky part to climb down some tree roots then it’s quite pleasant along a track across the top of the ridge for a few minutes. The path becomes a little less defined at this point and we took the left hand branch. This brought us to a steep / vertical rock face about 3 meters in height. Luckily I am not adverse to rock climbing, so it wasn’t too difficult to negotiate. However I later found there is an easier route to the right that circumvents this. A little bushwhacking soon saw us on the right track again.
Continuing along you get some great views across to the pinnacle peak, and up ahead to the rocky formation known as Haring Bato. When we got to this rocky outcrop and climb onto of it I was met with a snake. It wasn’t shy and sat there looking at us for quite some time before slithering away under the rocks. It was I believe not poisonous, but I wasn’t taking any chances! After these rocks it’s a tricky climb down and then the ridge becomes almost vertical again going back up towards the South summit. Here you have to climb up tree roots and steep muddy slopes for a hundred or so meters before popping out through some long grass onto the un suspecting South peak.
As this isn’t done often, there is not a lot of trash along the route, unlike the pathway up to the North peak. In an effort to keep it this way I do not want to give too many details regarding the traverse route. Those who are seriously interested for more information and the GPS tracks can contact me through this blog.
