Climbing Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines is an adventure not for the fainthearted. It must rank as one of the great hikes of the world but it’s a long, hot walk to the crater through weirdly beautiful yet desolate scenery Mount Pinatubo rumbled awake, after 600 years of peace, during June 1991. The inferno which followed displaced almost a million people from Central Luzon and destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland. About 41,000 homes were destroyed and hundreds of people died.