At 2,086 m, Mount Mantalingahan is the highest mountain on the island of
Palawan and the tenth most prominent peak in the Philippines - the summit of the
Beaufort Mountains Ultramafics, an Eocene-age belt of iron- and
magnesium-rich rock that gives the range its reddish, mineral-heavy soil. The
massif straddles five municipalities - Bataraza, Brooke's Point, Quezon, Rizal
and Sofronio Española - and its narrow, roughly 2 km summit ridge carries the
infamous Knife Edge, a knife-thin traverse near the top. Climbers rate the
ascent 9/9 on the standard difficulty scale, among the hardest treks in the
country: a 5- to 7-day traverse from Barangay Ransang in Rizal, over camps such as
Balin-balin and Paray-paray, down to Barangay Malis in Brooke's Point.
The mountain anchors the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape, 120,457
hectares proclaimed on 23 June 2009 and on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list.
Rapid biological surveys have recorded 861 plant species and 169 vertebrates,
including the endemic pitcher plant Nepenthes mantalingajanensis, named
after the mountain, the Palawan peacock-pheasant, the Palawan bearcat and the
critically endangered Philippine cockatoo.
The range is the ancestral domain of the Pala'wan people, including the
Tau't Bato - "people of the rock" - who still shelter in caves along its
slopes. Terrain is real NASA SRTM elevation draped with Esri World Imagery; the
summit ridge is refined with a denser mesh and z15 imagery.