In a city where the coldest thing most of us ever touch is the ice packed around the morning’s tuna catch, Arben Siao went looking for snow.
Early this October, the General Santos City mountaineer, an alumnus of Notre Dame of Dadiangas University, made it to Everest Base Camp, 5,364 meters above sea level. The photos that came back show him there with the NDDU banner held up in the thin mountain air, the name of his hometown carried right along with it.
Getting there is not a quick trip. Treks on the Nepal side usually begin with a small plane landing at Lukla, followed by more than a week on foot through Namche Bazaar, past the last villages, onto the loose rock of the Khumbu Glacier.
Somewhere along that trail, the air gets thin enough to notice. At base camp, each breath holds only about half the oxygen it would back home, which is why trekkers build rest days into the climb just to let their bodies catch up. Mount Apo, the tallest peak in the country, tops out at about 2,954 meters. Siao stood almost twice as high.
Somewhere along the way, the weather turned. Brigada News Gensan reported that bad conditions slowed the group down, forcing them to stop, rest, then decide that safety came first. Bombo Radyo, which described the expedition as a try for the summit itself, said Siao kept going only as far as it stayed safe before calling it off. October is supposed to be one of the kinder months in the Khumbu. Nobody told the mountain, apparently. Just last year, an early October blizzard on the Tibetan side of the same mountain left hundreds of trekkers stranded into the next day before rescuers could bring them all down.
Some might call this a near miss. It is hard to see it that way. Leo Oracion along with Erwin Emata became the first Filipinos on the summit in May 2006, climbing in spring, when the mountain tends to be at its most forgiving. Not every Filipino story up there ends that way. Philipp “PJ” Santiago, a Filipino engineer, was last seen alive at Camp 4 during his own Everest climb. Both kinds of stories belong to the same mountain. Siao chose the version where everyone comes home.
For anyone at NDDU right now, that photo is worth a second look. Most of us know Everest from documentaries, a mountain that seems to belong to other people from other countries. Seeing a Notre Dame banner up there, held by someone who once walked the same hallways, makes it feel a lot less far away. It is the kind of picture that deserves a spot on a campus bulletin board, half bragging rights, half dare. Even the university’s president took notice, with Bro. Manuel “Manny” De Leon congratulating Siao on Facebook for the attempt even after the weather kept him from going higher.
Everest is not going anywhere. If Siao wants the summit someday, it will still be there waiting. This time, he came down safe with the banner still in hand, with plenty of people back home proud of him. That is a good trip.