Sumaguing Cave

Big Cave

Useful Information

Location:	Sagada South Rd, Sagada 2619, Mountain Province. Southern Sagada, on the Suyo Road. Get a guide at the Sagada Municipal Building. (17.065333, 120.902400)
Open:	All year daily 6-17. [2025]
Fee:	4 Adults PHP 800, 5th Adult PHP 100, Transport PHP 350. [2025]
Classification:	Karst Cave
Light:	bring torch
Dimension:
Guided tours:	D=3h
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:
Address:	Sumaguing Cave, South Rd, Sagada 2619, Mountain Province, Tel: +63-999-391-5660.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

Description

Sumaguing Cave (Big Cave) is a cave of impressive size, hence the name. Some time ago it was called Sumaging, which was translated as 'Big Cave', but those webpages are gone, it seems they all adopted the new spelling. We have no idea why they changed this, there are no transliteration problems as all five local languages use latin characters. Actually we could not even find out from which language the name originates. But we still believe Sumaguing translates Big Cave and thus Sumaguing Cave is a Smile tautology as it translates Big Cave Cave.

This cave is not developed and is visited on organized cave trekking tours. Get a guide at the Sagada Municipal Building, nobody is allowed to go to the cave without a guide and without registration. The cave is very popular, although it is rather strenuous, with climbing and crawling, and wading through water. Rubber boots and a headlamp are much recommended, the guides discourage tourists from bringing handheld torches as the visitors need their hands all the time. We recommend a good headlamp and a helmet, which are obviously not provided. There are numerous easy climbs which are sometimes equipped with thick ropes with knots. Groups are limited to five visitors per guide, and the guides carry a huge kerosene lamp.

There are numerous fine formations with weird nonsensical names, a huge hall, which is called the Dancing Hall. But there is also a crawl called the Tunnel. At the end of the tour is a small waterfall and deep pool. It is possible to have a swim, although not everyone will enjoy such cool fun.

During pre-Christian times this cave was used to bury people. They were encased in a coffin carved in one piece out of enormous pine tree trunks. To fit in, they were arranged in the fetal position. Those coffins can be visited in the entrance hall, behind the huge portal of Lumiang Burial Cave (formerly Sagada Burial Cave). Although the different names suggest it to be another cave, its just another entrance of the same cave system. It is possible to make a through-trip.

We have some problems with the massive cave trekking culture in the Philippines, and here its even badder than average. The cave is too difficult for many people, it is more or less used as sports equipment for extreme sports enthusiast. We read about smoking visitors throwing cigarette butts on the floor, formations are used for climbing, and the cave already shows a massive wear. We do not recommend those tours.

On the other side the region is quite spectacular, and there are several walking trails which are quite interesting. It’s possible to walk to the huge entrance portal of Sumaguing, another trail leads to Lumiang Burial Cave. The coffins are inside the portal, and it’s not necessary to do a cave tour to see them. More interesting are actually the Hanging Coffins, which are about 1 km upstream. The trail starts at the anglican cemetery, and the coffins on the opposite wall of the gorge can be seen on the way down. Then the trail follows the river upstream to the resurgence of the Underground River. The river flows underground through a river cave for some distance. Then the trail leads back up to the road, which was built across the cave, actually the river sink is right below the road. Several houses along the road were built on top of a sort of stone forrest which surrounds the sink. All those sites are not very well signposted, it seems the officials prefer that tourists do the cave trekking.

The caves in the area served as hiding place for Filipino soldiers and guerillas during World War II.