DAVAO CITY — This year’s Mt. Apo Boulder Face Challenge, the longest running extreme adventure race in the country that is now on its tenth edition, is set this weekend, April 21-22, with 200 athletes expected to participate.
The race will start with a hike from the beach lines of Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur to the peak of Mt. Apo via the Sibulan Trail, then five kilometers (km) of river tubing, 36.6-km mountain biking, 53.5-km trail running, and 12-km road running.
There will be three categories: Individual Open Elite, All-male Relay, and All-female Relay.
Julius R. Paner, senior municipal tourism officer of Sta. Cruz, said the event is important as both a sports-ecotourism attraction and a means to promote environmental protection in the country’s highest mountain.
“It’s not just for tourism, but at the same time we would like to advocate conservation and protection of the mountain being a key biodiversity area in the Philippines,” Mr. Paner said during the media launching of the Visit Davao Summer Festival 2018, of which the race is one of the main events.
The Mt. Apo Boulder Face Challenge, which started as a small town event in 2008 with just locals participating, remains one of the highlights of the Pista sa Kinaiyahan (Feast for Mother Nature) in Sta. Cruz, host to a big portion of the Mt. Apo Natural Park.
Mr. Paner said representatives of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) are part of the organizing group to ensure the implementation of protection rules.
“We are closely working with DENR and in fact the agency is our number one institutional partner, and we will be deploying personnel to really strictly enforce the policies and regulations,” he said, taking note of the major damage that Mt. Apo suffered from a forest fire in 2016 that was triggered by visiting mountaineers. — Maya M. Padillo
