Sinai Trail

I am surprised (and delighted) by the enthusiastic response to the pictures from this trip. I guess that it is due to seeing pictures from a place that is so off the beaten track for one. Second, everybody knows of the Sinai from the Bible and probably has an image in their head of the Sinai being like the Sahara, an endless expanse of sand (I don’t know whether this is true for the Sahara as a matter of fact). Some readers of the earlier parts expressed something like “I had no idea the Sinai was like that”  when they saw that the Sinai is not like the Sahara.

I will conclude this series with another set of pictures of the landscape we walked through, less focussed on geological features as Pts 2 & 3 were and more illustrative of larger scale features of the landscape.

And then it is about time to get ready for this year’s hiking season which for me will start in early April and will likely end in November if my old bones hold up to what’s on the agenda.

Jebel El Gunna Sinai peninsulaNovember 30, 2023

Jebel El Gunna is a long-stretched mountain of about 1500 feet height that has only a few points where it can be accessed by climbing a moraine. here we are looking back over the system of wadis we walked that day to get to the base of one of these access points. It was a particularly desolate area, we encountered vegetation in only one wadi where the Bedouin had built a dam to collect rain water and used it to irrigate an orchard.

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Fauna and flora of the Sinai.

Let’s just say the Bedouin are not big on pets. There are some cats and dogs hanging around the settlements we passed through, but they were of the semi-feral variety it seemed to me. When food was served they would appear out of nowhere with the expectation of picking up some scraps. The reception they received from the Bedouin would not live up to BJ standards. The hikers received repeated “talking to’s” when they fed the animals while eating.

We had two dogs following us for days and one of the guides knew them as they had followed some of his groups before. This was in the mountains around St. Katherine where we climbed and descended steeply using ropes. The dogs always found a different way around these hairy spots that would not have been passable for the animals. And then, just as suddenly as they had appeared they disappeared again.

Ein KiddNovember 2, 2023

Some camels in the oasis Ein Kidd. I see no markings on their hides and think therefore that they are wild or feral.

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More pictures of geology and landscape

Sinai PeninsulaNovember 2, 2023

The Sinai peninsula was lifted out of the sea by lava pushing from below. In this process cracks opened up at right angle to the direction of the lift. These cracks were filled in by lava which then cooled. The color of this fill is different than that of the surrounding granite, which is typically grey or pink. As a consequence one can observe these black veins that are running as a straight line for as far as one can see.

This particular spot was unique in that two of the fractures crossed each other leading to this black cross on the mountainside.

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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.

UPSTREAM OF COLORED CANYON, SINAI PENINSULA

One of the first attractions we walked through was the Colored Canyon. I must confess that I was not as impressed as I was expected to be. But if you have hiked some of the slot canyons in Utah, it would take a bit to be impressed by slot canyons elsewhere. It did not help that while we were working our way up the slot the sun was obscured by clouds and the colors were not as Impressive as they could have been. We had hardly exited the slot canyon and the sun came out, illuminating Colored Mountain. Some fine banding there!

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Over the course of seven weeks, beginning in late October, to early December of last year (2023) I backpacked the Sinai Trail on the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. The hike was organized by sinaitrail.org, a Bedouin-run non-profit that aims to give the Bedouins an income stream from tourism that they themselves control. Apart from my predilection for hiking in the desert, this concept made me decide to go on this trip.

Over the course of 48 days we hiked some 550 km (320 miles), between 10 and 22 km (6-15 miles) per day. Owing to the harshness of the terrain, this was a supported hike. This means that supplies, most importantly almost all of the water the group drank and the food, was carried by either a Jeep or camels. Also, each of us had a “camel bag” with gear that would be ferried from camp site to camp site by these means. For my standards this was unusually luxurious as I am used to carry all of my gear and supplies on my back during my long distance hikes. However, doing this particular trek unsupported is not possible as neither the Bedouin nor the Egyptian government will allow unaccompanied tourists, foreign or domestic, in the Sinai. Moreover, the resupply of food and water are orders of magnitude more difficult in the Sinai than, say, in the Utah or Arizona backcountry.

We started the hike on the West shore of the Gulf of Aqaba, midway between Taba on the border of Israel and Egypt and the Bedouin town of Nueiba. Over the next 12 days we hiked to the oasis of Ein Kid, a location so small that it is not shown on any topographic map (it is at the bottom of the red line in the schematic map). From there, over the following 12 days we hiked to the small town of St. Katherine where we had a rest day, well deserved and necessary. From there in another section lasting 12 days we hiked roughly Northwest inland of the Gulf of Suez to Serabit el Khadem, an ancient turquoise mine from Pharaonic times. The last section brought us back from there to Nueiba on the Coast of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Sinai PeninsulaOctober 19, 2023

A schematic map of our route through the peninsula

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