Baguio is typically understood as a potent, tangible manifestation of the Americans’ supposed mastery over nature in the Philippines. This view, however, relegates the natural environment to the background as a passive, docile entity. While it is true that the Americans introduced significant changes to Baguio’s environs, it is also equally important to emphasize that the natural environment was equally dynamic and influential during Baguio’s colonial incipience. An often-overlooked aspect of Baguio’s environmental history is the city’s vulnerability to natural hazards, particularly rain and the epiphenomenal hazards associated with rain such as river torrents and landslides. When Americans traveled to Baguio during its early years as a colonial hill station, they wrote generously of their experiences while making the upland journey. Baguio’s highland environment, including its vulnerability to rain and its associated hazards, takes center stage in American travel accounts. Through a critical scrutiny of these accounts, this paper will show that rains, whether brought about by monsoonal thunderstorms or typhoons, constantly interrupted American mobility to Baguio, thus belying American exceptionalist claims of completely conquering the Luzon Cordillera.