TKH
In Part 2 and 3 I will show some pictures of the scenery we walked through. I must confess that I really had no idea what to expect in terms of landscape and terrain before I started to do some background work while I was deciding whether this trip was for me or not. It turned that there was going to be mountains, lots of them, and so it was an easy decision to go for it. I am a mountain kind a guy.
Right off the coast as one drives North from Sharm El-Skeikh there are mountain in the several hundred to thousand meter height (1500- 3000 ft). Across the Gulf of Aqaba one has a view of Saudi Arabia and it looks pretty similar there (he says without having actually been there).
As you go inland the mountains get taller reaching 2650 m (8750 ft) at Mt. Catherine with several other summits nearby nearly as tall. The rock varies between granite of the grey and pink variety, sandstone and basalt. Between the mountains run the wadis, essentially flood plains, which can be deeply sandy (and I mean “deeply”) and often blindingly white, or rocky, filled with what one would call scree in the Sierra.
Both types of surface pose some challenges for the hiker as the sand “gives” and as you push off with each step your foot may actually slip back a bit before catching. The rocky surfaces just massage the soles of your feet and the soles after a while just don’t like it too much. The easiest surface to walk on was sand that had been hardened by the wind or by precipitation. If one got lucky it was a smooth surface so hard that one could walk on as if it was dirt. The absolute worst areas were those where the ubiquitous Toyota pickup trucks had passed through and left deep scars in the sand. Those stretches were really exhausting.
My desert hiking experience is mostly in the US Southwest, specifically Arizona/New Mexico/Utah. I had thought I had seen some rather barren places, but the Sinai peninsula can easily top that, especially after years of drought.
I had never been to a place before where the geology is so unobscured by vegetation as the Sinai. I found this “in your face” feature fascinating. Alas, I do not know much about geology as a science, so please do not expect that I expound on the features shown in the pictures to follow.