chossclimbers

Go back to Jordan – First Trip

Up until last Thanksgiving, the plan was to go climbing about 2K miles to the west of Jordan. Some kidnappings and even a sad murder of a tourist (& most importantly the refusal of the transport company to take us where we wanted to go) altered those plans and we found ourselves looking for an alternate destination that would work for the same time period. We quickly came up with Jordan’s Wadi Rum which would be just emerging from its relatively wet period of the year in the final weeks of February.

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A series of flights stretching 20+ hours and a 4 hour cab ride put us and our 150lbs of gear in Wadi Rum which lies in the south of Jordan near the Red Sea port of Aqaba and the Saudi border. Here we met our friendly host Khaled who would be our “enabler” during the nine days in Wadi Rum. Even if being guided is not your cup of tea (not ours either), you quickly realize that a local Bedouin contact is almost essential. This is the person that will take you out to the more remote climbs in the desert (good luck hiking 10 km in the sands…have fun with that), get you bottled water and fuel at a tenth of the tourist cost, help you get cabs for trips to Petra and generally keep an eye on you during your stay there. Khaled’s two brothers (Attayak and Omar) are climbers with numerous technical rescues under their belts. We were also lucky enough to be invited by Khaled into his home on countless evenings where we enjoyed his family’s wonderful cooking in a warm and very welcoming atmosphere. We quickly got used to and would very much look forward to enjoying hot Bedouin tea with Khaled after a day of climbing out in the cold and windy desert. This was the normal preamble to dinner and would take place either in Khaled’s house in the village or in his mother’s camp in the desert. It’s hard to convey the joy of the simple act of sipping very sweet tea around a warm camp-fire on a cold desert evening.

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On our first day in Wadi Rum we made the short hike to the base of Jebel Rum’s east face and climbed a 4-pitch line called Goldfinger rated (French) 5+ (~5.9). One out of three quality stars seems about right. Our first feel for Rum rock was not encouraging: blocky sandstone terrain of a quality…well, imagine if Sedona and Arches sandstones ever procreated… The upper half of the route was nice however: a finger crack in stuff more closely resembling Castle Valley’s Wingate. On the way down, the upper (of two) pitch of Troubador caught our eye and so we climbed that as well: a beautiful looking splitter crack in a dihedral (6a+) that went from red to blue Camalots in size.

The following day, Khaled drove us out to the Barrah Canyon (30-45 minutes in a 4X4) where we climbed Merlin’s Wand, a beautiful 5-pitch long crack (6a+) nicknamed The Supercrack Of Rum. Though the terrain offered little in the way of true straight in jamming (mostly face climbing around the crack), the rock was almost impeccable and the climbing highly enjoyable. We were surprised to see drilled angle belays which we used to think were an exclusive specialty of the American southwest. After rapping off, we hiked out to look at the well reputed Star Of Abu Judaidah route. Indeed, the line looked stellar from below and we quickly prioritized it on our list.

Photos

Goldfinger

Troubador

Merlin’s Wand

Go to Part 2
Go back to Jordan – First Trip