At 2,058 m, Mount Guiting-Guiting is the highest point on
Sibuyan Island and in the province of Romblon, rising almost straight from
the sea in the municipality of Magdiwang. Its name means "jagged" in
Romblomanon, and it is well earned: the whole upper mountain is a run of exposed, broken
ultramafic rock - razor ridges and boulder fields that give the peak its saw-toothed
skyline. Climbers know it simply as "G2", and rank it a 9/9 - on par with Halcon and
Mantalingahan as one of the country's hardest and most technical ascents.
The classic route from Barangay Tampayan climbs through lowland then mossy forest
to Mayo's Peak (1,550 m), the traditional base camp, before committing to the summit
day: the wind-scoured Knife Edge with ravines falling away on both sides, the
Kiss the Wall scramble, the false summit of the Peak of Deception (1,959 m),
and a near-vertical wall before the final Walk of Fame to the top. The first
documented ascent was made on 17 June 1982 by a team led by Arturo Valdez.
Sibuyan has never been connected to another landmass, and its isolation has made it one of
the most biodiverse islands on Earth - "the Galapagos of Asia", with around 700
vascular plant species (54 found nowhere else) packed into some of the densest forest on the
planet. Much of the massif is protected as Mt. Guiting-Guiting Natural Park, declared
in 1996. The peak spends much of the year in cloud - press the button below to raise the sea
of clouds and let the sawtooth ridge float above it. Terrain is real NASA SRTM elevation draped
with Esri World Imagery; the summit region is refined with a denser mesh and z15 imagery. The
cloud deck is stylised.