Osmeña Peak to Kawasan Falls: Is the Hiking Trail Open?

Before you plan the Osmeña Peak to Kawasan hike, one thing needs saying: nobody publishes whether the walking route is currently open. Not the Dalaguete tourism office, not Badian, not the DENR. Both ends are open and busy. The trail between them has quietly fallen out of routine use, and most people making that journey now take a habal-habal for around ₱1,000 rather than walk it.

That is not a reason to skip it. It is a reason to call before you commit a day to it. Here is everything that is actually established about the trail, and everything that is not.

The route

Osmeña Peak sits at 1,013 meters on the boundary of Dalaguete and Badian, the highest point on Cebu. The jump-off is Mantalongon market in Dalaguete, about 84 kilometers south of Cebu City, and the exit is Barangay Matutinao in Badian, at Kawasan Falls.

The summit itself is short work. From the jump-off it is somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour of walking, depending on which recent account you read; an older and more conservative source gives one to two hours. It is graded a minor climb, trail class 1 to 2, and described as beginner-friendly.

The hike down to Kawasan takes up most of the day. Four to six hours from the peak down to the falls, net descent from a thousand meters to near sea level. One published day plan starts the trek at 6:30am, summits at 7:00, begins the descent at 8:00 and reaches the falls at 2:30pm.

Nobody publishes the distance in kilometers and nobody publishes an elevation profile. A GPS track exists on the usual hiking platform. Take it with you rather than trusting a written description.

Fees, and why the number you are quoted keeps changing

The Municipality of Dalaguete publishes no fee schedule for Osmeña Peak. Its own tourism pages mention the peak and list no fees, no hours and no tourism office contact.

What circulates instead are four figures that disagree by a factor of three:

• Entrance or registration: ₱50, ₱100 or ₱150 per person depending on the source, all from 2025 or 2026. An older account gives ₱20.
• Guide: ₱150 to ₱300 per group. Two recent sources call a guide mandatory as of 2025; one calls it optional.
• Camping: ₱50 per person, with tent rental ₱300 to ₱500 if you need one.

Budget ₱150 to ₱300 per person all in and carry it in small notes. Anyone quoting you a precise single figure for Osmeña Peak is quoting one blog. Checked September 2026.

Camping rules that are consistently reported: open fires are prohibited, a portable gas or solid fuel stove is required, leave no trace, and everything you carry up comes back down with you.

Water, which is the real problem

No mapped or confirmed water refill point exists along the trail. Vendors sell water at the Mantalongon jump-off. Older accounts mention water sources on the way to the summit and at the Kawasan source, and explicitly flag limited water on the descent.

A four to six hour descent, in Cebu, with sun exposure the whole way and no reliable refill. Carry more than you think, and carry it from Mantalongon.

The other reported hazards are the ordinary ones: slippery underfoot when wet, dogs, and no shade to speak of.

Kawasan Falls, at the bottom

The good news is that this end is unambiguous. Kawasan Falls is open, confirmed as of June 2026, and staying open through a ₱110 million provincial rehabilitation program clearing rock and debris left by Typhoon Tino. The governor’s position is that the work happens section by section so that tourism and local livelihoods carry on.

Rates, set after the October 2023 reopening and regulated since:

• Canyoneering ₱2,000 per person, up from ₱1,500, effective 26 October 2023. The published breakdown covers an administrative and environmental fee, a guide’s pay, the operator’s share, food and drink, and personal protective equipment. Transport is extra, reported at ₱75 to ₱100.
• View-only entrance ₱200 for three hours, split between the Badian LGU and the provincial capitol.

All tourists must book through the provincial government’s online portal, operators are BIR-registered, and guides are DOT-accredited with first aid, basic life support and service training. Opening hours are not published.

This site has a closure history worth knowing, because it will close again. Canyoneering was suspended from June to October 2023 over typhoon debris. It closed briefly on 23 June 2025 after heavy rain. On 23 October 2025 a boulder fell fifteen to twenty feet and struck a guide, whose helmet prevented a head injury; the trail was inspected and declared safe the next day, then halted anyway on 26 October for a fuller safety assessment, reopening on 28 October with mandatory helmets and life vests. After Typhoon Tino in November 2025 the falls and canyoneering were still closed as of early November. The date they reopened after Tino is not published.

Our Kawasan Falls guide covers the falls on their own terms.

Is the trail open?

Unknown, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

What is established: the 30 September 2025 earthquake was centred in northern Cebu and no southern Cebu tourism closure has been attributed to it. Kawasan at the exit end is open. Osmeña Peak at the entry end is open and busy.

What is not established: whether the walking route between them is maintained, guided and in normal use. A January 2026 account describes it as a challenging multi-hour trek and then notes that most travelers now take a habal-habal for around ₱1,000, one and a half to two hours. That is the tell. A trail people pay to avoid is a trail that has stopped being the default.

Before you go, call the Dalaguete and Badian tourism offices. If you cannot reach anyone, do the peak as its own trip and the falls as its own trip, which is a good day either way.

If you do it

• Sleep at Mantalongon or camp on the peak. A hike that starts at 6:30am does not start with a three hour drive from Cebu City.
• Sunrise is the whole point of camping. Osmeña Peak in cloud is a rumour of a view; at dawn it is the reason people come.
• Three liters minimum. There is no reliable refill.
• Book Kawasan before you walk to it. Entry runs through the provincial portal and turning up at the bottom of a six hour descent without a booking is a poor way to end a day.
• Small notes for everything. Registration, guide, camping, all cash.
• It is cold up there. A thousand meters on a mountain in Cebu is genuinely cold before dawn, and every year somebody finds this out in a singlet.

Getting there: the South Bus Terminal guide covers the run to Dalaguete, and the Cebu trip budget calculator will price the trip around it.