Bat-awan Peak

Overview

Bat-awan Peak is the highest elevation point in Talibon municipality, located in San Carlos barangay in the northern part of Bohol. From the summit, the view extends across the Camotes Sea to the north and over the green interior terrain of northern Bohol. Talibon is a coastal municipality and the main commercial hub of the northern part of the province, functioning as the primary gateway for communities along Bohol’s northern coast.

The peak sits within a municipality that also includes the Ipil River, the Cataban Fish Sanctuary, and traditional pottery-making communities — indicating that northern Bohol’s attractions combine natural highland terrain with active coastal and cultural features.

[TO ENRICH: peak elevation in metres, trail length and difficulty rating, and whether a formal trail or guide system has been established.]

Location

San Carlos barangay is in Talibon municipality, on the northern coast of Bohol. Talibon town centre is approximately 85 kilometres north of Tagbilaran City by road. The peak is in the upland interior portion of the municipality, away from the coastal town area. [FACT NEEDED: exact distance from Talibon town centre to the trailhead.]

Getting There

Talibon is served by direct bus from Tagbilaran City’s Dao Terminal — travel time approximately 2 to 2.5 hours. Talibon also serves as a gateway from the north via ferry connections. From Talibon town, habal-habal (motorcycle taxis) can transport visitors toward San Carlos barangay. Confirm current trail access and habal-habal availability at the Talibon Tourism Office.

Practical Info

[FACT NEEDED: entrance fee, guide requirements, and current trail condition for Bat-awan Peak.] As with most Bohol highland trails, the path is likely ungraded and conditions vary significantly between the dry season (December to April) and the wet season. Bring water, sun protection, and trekking footwear. The dry season months offer clearest visibility for sea views.

What to Expect

A hilltop summit with open sightlines over the Camotes Sea to the north and forested interior terrain. As the highest point in a coastal municipality, the ascent involves sustained climbing from lowland elevation. Views include the coastline of northern Bohol and potentially the Camotes Islands of Cebu province on clear days.

Notes

Source: BPTO Table 11 — Inventory of Tourist Attractions (Bohol Tourism Profile Eco Dev 2025). The source profile contains a minor typographical error in the original text (“must-visit d estination”) — reproduced accurately from source. [FACT NEEDED: peak elevation, trail data, and whether the site has formal tourism infrastructure — no dedicated source describing Bat-awan Peak specifically was found despite multiple search attempts.]

For general topographic context only (not a confirmed figure for this specific peak): topographic mapping of the whole Talibon municipality records a maximum elevation of 309 meters across the municipality’s territory, against a municipal average of around 11–35 meters. This does not confirm Bat-awan Peak’s own summit elevation and should not be used as a substitute for it.

Source: Talibon topographic map, elevation, terrain, accessed 2026-07-17.

2026-07-28 research pass (fresh angle, per prior null-result note above): Re-checked with a different set of sources rather than repeating the same municipality-level topo search. Findings:

• Re-pulled the full text of the PPDO Bohol Tourism Profile 2025 PDF (Table 11, p.170) directly: Bohol PPDO Tourism Profile 2025 (PDF), accessed 2026-07-28. Confirmed the table’s columns are only Attraction / Location / Type / Category / Description — there is no fee, elevation, hours, or trail-difficulty column in the source at all, for any entry in the table, not just this one. So the missing facts are not a text-extraction gap; the official source simply doesn’t record them.
• Checked the Talibon LGU’s own site and tourism page (talibon.gov.ph/tourism, accessed 2026-07-28) and the Bohol Provincial Tourism Office’s “Behold Bohol” page for Talibon (tourism.bohol.gov.ph/visitbohol-talibon, accessed 2026-07-28). Neither lists Bat-awan Peak at all (they cover Bongan Sandbar, Carlos P. Garcia Memorial Park, Talibon Cathedral, Abundayan Festival) — the site has not yet reached either official tourism inventory beyond the PPDO profile table.
• Checked local social sources: several YouTube vlogs (“Mountain Adventure in Bohol | BAT-AWAN PEAK,” “BAT AWAN PEAK, SIKATUNA, TALIBON, BOHOL,” “Bat awan hills, San Carlos Talibon Bohol”) and a Facebook post (facebook.com/yhenzcajes) confirm the site is a known informal hangout/viewpoint locally, but none state elevation, trail length, fees, or a trailhead distance — they’re photo/vlog content only, no practical trip data. One video’s on-screen tag pairs “Sikatuna” with “Talibon” in the title, which does not match this file’s sourced barangay (San Carlos, per BPTO Table 11); not confident enough to treat as a correction, so left untouched — flagging in case a future pass wants to verify barangay-level detail via LGU/CENRO records.
• Tried a raw DEM elevation lookup at the file’s own pin coordinates (10.116, 124.288) via a public elevation API — returned 45 m, but this is a coarse satellite-DEM estimate at an approximate marker point, not a surveyed or named source about the peak’s actual summit, and it is inconsistent with the site being called “the highest peak in the municipality” (whose max is 309 m per the topo source above). Discarded as unreliable rather than recorded as fact.
• No TripAdvisor listing, Google Maps business listing, or Cebuano/Filipino-language blog post specifically describing Bat-awan Peak’s trail, fee, or hours was found.

Elevation, trail length/difficulty, formal trail/guide status, entrance fee, guide requirement, current trail condition, and exact trailhead distance from Talibon town centre remain unresolved after this pass; tags left in place for a future attempt (candidate next steps: direct call/email to Talibon Tourism Office, or a CENRO/BPTO records request, since no public-web source appears to hold this data).