49th day (The 2 Canyons)

At four fifteen we rolled out of bed, or more correctly, rolled off our paper thin mattresses, in the aim of getting out by a quarter to five. Yoni was nowhere to be seen.  He claimed that it was preferable to sleep on a mat besides the sulphur pool, with its rotten egg stench,  rather than have to put up with my snoring. Indeed!! In any case, this hour was set after long and bitter negotiations, pitting Mark, Garry and I against Yoni in a battle of wits that made the Abu Mazen and Bibi show look like a lovers spat. In the end, four fifteen was a compromise that, like all good compromises, made both sides feel like they'd lost. I will go on record here and say that Yoni was basically right and it was a good thing we didn't start any later.

Whilst the day turned out to be far more successful than its predecessor, we were once again plagued with logistical issues before our boots touched the trail. Without going into long-winded detail, logistics prevented us from actually starting to walk until after eight.

When we eventually started walking, it proved to be not exactly the most exhilarating landscape we've been through. We were even warned not to go this area; not because of the boredom, but because it was a closed military area. There was a large sign at the entrance to the trail that stated in no uncertain terms that this was an army firing area and there was positively no entry. So it's not enough that the shvil elders have had us drop down cliffs, ford running streams and climb flimsy ladders so far on our 5 years on the shvil, now they're sending us through a firing range. Terrific.

This closed military area was perhaps incrementally more interesting than the 4 km of the Yellow Plains of Moab from yesterday, but Nachal Faran is the sort of place you have to walk through just to get to somewhere else. Not long after we set off, we passed a group of youngsters on what appeared to be a youth movement trip. They were sitting around getting last minute instructions from their guide as we passed them.  A short time later, they passed us, their walking pace being slightly quicker than ours. We figured that they were about to hike the same route that we were doing today, it being a fairly well known hike. But no. Fifteen minutes later, we passed them, after they'd stopped by the side of the path. This was the last we saw of them for the day. I can't imagine what happened to them, but I certainly hope they weren't forced to march down Nachal Faran in its entirety, or worse, that the sign at the entrance actually had some meaning.

Today's route was a bit strange. There were two amazing sections, Vardit canyon and Barak canyon and two long, quite boring sections. The nachal Faran section was 8 uninspiring km. Now I want to comment here on an interesting phenomenon. When the walking is long and boring, the conversation is more interesting. When the hiking is interesting (and usually difficult at the same time) there is far less conversation. I guess our limited attention spans are too busy taking in the beauty. Alternately, we can't spare what neurons we have for conversation when they're too busy in self-preservation.  So over this long boring section there was much conversation about the dwindling numbers of fore-mentioned neurons, failing memories, bespoke, and things-that –are-said-on-the-shvil-stay-on- the-shvil. The conversation about failing short-term memory made me particularly happy. The playing field had finally been levelled and my friends were experiencing what has always been regular for me.

A path forked to the left away from the nachal Faran path and thankfully took us around the corner and into some shade. After a short drink stop we were suddenly in Vardit Canyon. And wow, it was worth the eight not so interesting km that we'd just covered. The canyon is only a few hundred metres long, but it is steep sided and high, it's walls marked by wind and water erosion. Petra in Jordan is very similar, only here there is no amazing temple at the end. Instead there's a vertical climb up a narrow crag in order to get out. Hand and foot rungs lead to narrow ledges that lead to ladders that lead to more rungs and more ladders. Sort of a playground for adults. The angle is mostly 90˚ and the crag less than a metre wide. We were climbing up a crack in the mountain. It's surprising how flexible your old heavy body can be when it has absolutely no choice, and I knew I was going to pay for this enforced flexibility the next day.

Occasionally we'd look down or across the desert below and this only further enhanced the "wow" factor. Eventually we made it to the top, totally exhausted by the effort, but feeling satisfied that we'd done it. Garry wandered ahead a little as we rested. Suddenly we heard an exclamation along the lines of "oh shit". When Garry says "oh shit", we know we're in trouble.
We had gotten to the top of the vertical climb out of Vardit, but now we were being asked to walk up a very very steep hill. Howls of protest came to mind, but it wouldn't have helped. So, as a certain sporting goods company says…just do it. I thought it strange that other long hard uphill climbs had names; Ramon tooth, Akev point, Eli ascent to name but a few. This one was nameless, but just as hard. On more than one occasion on today's walk, Yoni and I would pathetically look at each other and gasp "we've gotta get into shape".

 The higher we got the more spectacular the views became, until we reached the top, where we had a panorama over the desert, the hills and into Jordan on the opposite side of the rift valley. It was as striking as we've seen to date.

That was about the extent of the good stuff for the moment. A beautiful, high walled desert canyon, a vertical climb and then a gut-wrenching walk made for a pretty good hour and a half. The next hour and a half was undulating rocky desert. At least nachal Faran had been flat.

Mark found the energy to keep chatting, but it was mostly one sided, as the rest of us were too busy trying to get oxygen from our lungs to our heart and failing muscles to actually have a conversation. We knew that eventually we would get to the top of Barak Canyon and a few time thought we saw the path go towards a cliff, only for it to go past and onwards on the plateau. It actually wasn't that bad…there was a lovely breeze and whilst not scintillating, I've walked worse.

The path eventually came around a bend and suddenly there was an amazing canyon below us. We could see the path wind down the side of the mountain, disappear into the back of the canyon and then continue on out of the canyon and into the valley.  At some points the canyon appeared a few metres wide, at others not even a metre, just a crack in the rock. We could also see how and where it widens to a "regular" steep sided canyon tens of metres across. All this from our birds-eye perch from above. After walking the six kilometres that link the two canyons, this sight was quite exhilarating.

The walk down was pretty, as we quickly dropped down from our view from above. The path wound its way along the side of the canyon, but we couldn't see what was waiting for us. We knew that in order to get onto the canyon itself we had to drop down some ladders, similar to what we'd gone up, coming out of Vardit. Or so we thought. What we hadn't been told was that this was actually the secret training camp of the IDF gymnastics team, which readied itself for international competition against the Marines, the French Foreign Legion and the Chinese Secret Police. If it wasn't for our Tzahal, the Iranians would also compete. They're pretty good at hanging.

The first element was the standard rungs. A simple training exercise where you are expected to climb down a cliff face, backwards, with the aid of hand and foot rungs. For the most, the rungs are in the right place, but you must be careful not to become wrong-footed. The next set of rungs are for the advanced gymnast. The rungs are not always where you might expect them to be and you have further to drop.

Once we have successfully negotiated the rungs element, it's the ladders. First trick is actually getting on to the ladders safely. You must, of course do this backwards, and this entails dropping your body over the lip of the ledge in the hope that your feet find the first step. The ladder is made of steel cable, meaning that when it's attached closely to the cliff-face, it's reasonably stable. Occasionally, where it is still attached to the cliff and the cliff actually slants inwards, it can be difficult finding the next step. At some point the cliff slants too far inwards and the ladder does what ladders do…continues down vertically, not attached to the wall. The would-be gymnast now has to encounter a strange and scary phenomenon called wobblization. True, we made this word up, but it aptly describes the ladder's side-to-side rocking motion as we tried to descend. It's bloody scary.

When we heard Garry upgrade his exclamation from the earlier "oh shit" to "oh fuck", we knew we were in for more trouble. It turned out that the main reason for going down the first ladder, about 20 metres in length, was to prepare us for the next ladder, which dropped down about 40 metres. Garry the Brave (and relatively lithe) admitted that even he was scared. It wasn't just the length, the reverse angle and the slippery metal which made it difficult, the wobblization this time was backwards and forwards instead of sideways.  Still, we made it down safely and are all here to tell the tale.

Next, and last on the gymnastics training drill was the ropes course. A thick hessian rope had been anchored into the rock. It's purpose is it to help us balance ourselves whilst finding steps hewn into the ledge that we were trying to descend.

Don't let our gymnastics blind you from the fact that we were inside a beautiful crevice. It was somewhat other-worldly. We could look forward and see the crevice wind on through the rock.

After finishing all the descents, we felt we deserved a good break. Finding a nice flat rock that allowed us spectacular views down the canyon, we sat down and had lunch. Occasionally we'd look back and up, not quite believing what we'd actually done.

After lunch, all that was left was to walk down the canyon, which gradually opened up into a valley, which eventually led to Yoni's waiting car. A simple, pleasant and very pretty hour's walk. That's what my eyes and brain thought. The muscles in my legs had a different opinion. They decided that they'd had enough and cramped up every now and again. Have you ever had a cramp on the muscle that surrounds the ankle? I didn't even know I had one there till it cramped. We arrived back to Yoni's car with the feeling that we'd finally had a really good, proper day on the shvil.

For once, we had some luck. As we neared Yoni's car, the weather very quickly started to change. Up till now it had been a pleasant autumn day with a cool breeze. Within ten minutes, dark black clouds rolled in, the sky turned grey and almost to the minute of us arriving to the car, it started raining. There is no fear in walking in the rain in other areas, but in the desert, rain can easily be accompanied by flash floods.

As we were driving out, a car full of young kids stopped us and asked us if Barak canyon was worth a look. Given that it was after two in the afternoon and raining, we admitted that it was indeed beautiful but most definitely not recommended at this time. They drove on, despite our warnings. We didn't hear about any disasters in the Aravah region, so I assume they got out safely.

By the time we retrieved the car parked at the beginning, it was getting late. There was no way we were going to make it home for Shabbat dinner, but we still hurried to get back north.

It was great to finally be back on the shvil. As always, it was a lot of fun, but the one undisputable point that came from our first shvil episode for the season was that we spent too much time mucking around with logistics and this was an unwanted and unnecessary distraction. We'll do it differently next time.