OK. Now I've got that off my chest we can get down to the business at hand.
It was good to get back on the trail. For various personal reasons we hadn't done a leg for almost two months and I think we all missed it. So much so that getting up at 5.30 to get organised didn't seem too bad. We're old hands now at meeting, dropping off cars and getting onto the trail as quickly as possible but if there had been a Segafreddo within drinking distance we would have delayed our start by 15 minutes for the mandatory double macchiatto. But alas, no segafreddo in range.
Before parking the cars we had to decide where to finish. There were 2 choices. One was the shorter option, where we would descend Mt Carmel and finish at the foot of the mountain, at Ma'arat Etzbah national park. The full route would have us continue a further 7 km south to the Nachal Ma'arot national park. Guess what we chose? WRONG. We chose the long route because we hadn't walked for so long that we wanted to catch up on lost time. Besides, now that we're experienced shvillers, having dealt with the worst the shvil and the weather can throw at us over this past year and a bit, what's 18 km to us? A piece of cake. Yeah, well, we probably should have read the fine print. But more of that later.
By 7.45 we headed out of Ussfiya down Wadi Chik. (We were glad to get out of Ussfiya in one piece since there'd been rioting there during the week, but if you want more information about that, read the papers.) The path was wide and easy, the slope a gentle downhill, the birds were chirping and the weather was still cool and pleasant. Other than the above mentioned rubbish, what more could the 4 intrepid shvillers want? We were walking quickly through light pine forest and alternately thick, dark natural oak forest. Here and there the forest would open up and we'd marvel at the Carmel mountains all around us.
Occasionally the marked shvil yisrael route would divert unexpectedly from what appeared to be the main wide path but this was welcomed as it led us down a smaller, less travelled path.
We knew most of today's route was downhill, with a net drop of about 500 metres, but there was one major uphill to be negotiated, Mt Shokef. And so after an hour or so of walking we rounded a bend and sure enough the path started to incline. And climb it did. This was a mountain, not a hill. So we just put our heads down, huffed and puffed, and forged ahead. Big mistake.
We always new that at some point we were going to get lost. Not just miss a sign and backtrack a few minutes but totally and wholly lost. It was always going to happen. . Eventually our luck was going to run out and we would miss a turn or a marking and end up not knowing where we were or how far we'd gone in the wrong direction. That's the predicament we were in now. We had been so intent on just getting to the top that each one of us neglected to keep a look out for a route marking. By the time we realised that it had been a long time since we'd seen a marking we didn't know how far we'd gone since we missed it. On the assumption we were on the wrong mountain, it meant we had to retreat off this mountain, backtrack , find and climb Mt Shokef, the correct mountain. We found some shade, took out the guide book which has detailed topographical maps and hoped that we could get our bearings. When that failed, Yoni turned to the GPS in his cell phone in the hope that it would say "you are on top of Mt. Shokef". All it told us was that we were fucking idiots and were 6 km from the Carmel Mountain Spa & Retreat which under the circumstances was about as helpful as a council bureaucrat on lunch break. We all had that dreadful hollow knot in our stomachs that came from the certainty that we'd waisted a few hundred thousand kilojoules of precious energy and we had no idea where we were. Energy that wasgoing to have to be expenedd again if and when we eventually found the right path.
Before we started to backtrack I volunteered to climb on just a bit further and reconnoitre the area ahead, in case a miracle occurs and I stumble on to a trail marking. Off I waddled and after a couple of hundred metres it sort of levelled out and after another bend or two a path (of course,not the correct path) continued on a plateau-like course. Not having a clue of what to make of this information I returned to the group of stunned mullets like one of the spies that had entered into biblical Israel in order to report back to Moses and the tribal elders. There were 2 pieces of semi sensible information. One is the path ahead, the one we knew to be the wrong one, was flat-ish. Certainly not the steep incline that we would have to climb if we backtracked. Two, the path headed west, the direction we had to go. So on the basis of these two pieces of not ironclad logic we decided to push on rather than take the far more logical yet unpleasant option of going back. The spring that had previously been in our step was now gone, replaced by the plod of not having a clue where this was going to take us. And so on we plodded for about 15 minutes until suddenly and for no apparent reason, a small side path joined the path we were on. Lo and behold, this side path had the familiar white, blue and orange markings painted on a rock, as did another rock on the path we were walking on about 20 metres ahead. It appears that we'd been on Mt Shokef the whole time and had simply missed the turn off that would have had us climb directly up the mountain. Instead we arrived to this point on a more circuitous and stressful route. Once again a combination of dumb luck and the gods looking out for us saved us from what could have been a much worse situation. But we really are pushing our luck.I'm not trying to blame Mr. Shvill painter for us getting lost but I must comment that he was largely out to lunch when he had to paint the markings on today's leg. There were many place where there simply was no marking, the marking was in an illogical and unhelpful place or even directed us in one direction when we found 50 metres down the path that it wasn't exactly the right way. Subsequently we spent more time than usual walking around in circles, looking for trail markings and that doesn't include the time when we didn't even bother looking for a trail sign because we knew we were lost.
Not long after we rejoined the correct path and got to the top of Mt. Shokef the trail came into a small clearing that was occupied by a makeshift army camp. A large camouflage tent, a drinking-water tank on
Now that we'd climbed Mt.Shokef we had to descend it. Basically from here we descended 400 metres over about 7 km of walking. I know we spend lots of time dodging serious uphills by either driving to the top (Mt tabor) or reversing the direction of the day's walk. I also know that climbing what we did today wouldn't have been any fun what so ever. But anyone who has done mountain walking can vouch that sometimes steep downhills are not much easier than the uphills. Parts of the path were broad and leafy or along a wide safe ledge above the winding valley below and the slope was barely noticed. In other parts the way was narrow, steep and rocky. If it didn't tax our cardo-vascular system it made our knees feel all of their fifty years. And then there were sections that the "path" was a drop down a cliff-face or a crevice. When your 21 and nimble you wouldn't give it a second thought. When your'e 50, far less nimble and much broader (and that's putting it gently), getting down these sections takes second, third and fourth thoughts. An eagle hovering above would have lost all control of its flight from laughing so hard, seeing the 4 of us trying to manoeuvre down these rock faces.
In a previous blog I proposed a theory that girls walking the shvill always do it in groups of three. Not Quite sure why, but today the theory was certainly reconfirmed. I think we saw 4 groups of girls walking the shvil and they were all 3-somes, except one group who were walking as a pair. We asked them half jokingly where the third one was and they answered perfectly seriously that she'd taken a day off and was rejoining them tomorrow
As we headed further west the Mediterranean Sea loomed closer. We saw the sea for the first time, from a distance, during our previous leg. I'm a bit ho hum about it but Yoni and Garry, the seafarers, were quite excited. If we would very generously describe the Galil as the whole area north of Haifa then any way you look at it, by now we were truly out of the Galil.
I think I can safely say it was the weirdest walking day we've had. We thought we'd goten really badly lost, but didn't. I rolled my ankle but continued on like the brave trooper I am. Garry, who is usually the fittest of us looked a bit like a zombie after having had only two hours sleep due to guard duty on Kedarim. Then, to make matters worse Yoni and Garry somehow got separated from Tracey and I even though they were only 10 metres behind us. I rang Garry to check out where they were and they had taken a different path. Since they had already moved on and didn't want to backtrack, we agreed that we would meet in the carpark at ma'aat eztbah national park that both of us could see about 300 metres below. The car park was about 11 km after we started and would have been the end point if we'd decided to do the shorter route. From here we were to head south another 8 km over hopefully easier terrain.
Tracey and I continued on the marked shvil route which was quite circuotous as it curled around the mountain. The path dropped sharply along slippery loose stones until eventualy it came down into a dry creek bed which led Tracey and I to the carpark. Yoni and Garry were already there, leaving us jealious that they'd taken the shortcut. Big mistake. It appears the the path they'd taken ended not long after I'd spoken to them and they descended the last part of the mountain through bush and straight down the mountain face. Yoni had taken a fall and hurt his shoulder and Garry, who started the day exhausted was now catatonic. But we had another 8 km to go to get to the end and back to the car. Well in theory, at least. In practice we decided that Tracey and I would walk 300 metres down to the main road, the old Haifa -Tel Aviv road, hitch hike or catch a bus 7 km down the road , walk inland 300 metres and pick up the awaiting car. Whilst no one stopped for two dusty, sweaty vagabonds, the egged bus driver had no such choice and dropped these 2 strange passengers off 7 km further south from where they got on. We got back to the car and drove back to pick Garry and Yoni up. A somewhat ignoble finish to a strange day's walk.
