chossclimbers

Go back to Jordan – First Trip
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No more on-off rain the following night…just a steady downpour of the sort that reverts sandstone back to sand. We woke up late that morning not looking forward to stepping outside into the cold wetness. We enjoyed a slow breakfast in the Rest House trying to decide what to do with the shitty day. Though our original plan was to hit Petra on our drive back to Amman, we figured we could get one more climbing day at the end if we changed the time table. A quick (~2 hrs) cab ride put us in the town of Wadi Musa at Petra’s gates. What a shock going from the relaxed atmosphere of the Rum to the tourist zoo hell of Petra! Cold, crowded and expensive. Did the tourist thing (saw The Treasury and some other tombs) and were happily back in Wadi Rum in time for dinner.

Next morning Khaled drove us out to Burdah, famous for its natural sandstone arch. We picked the best rated (three stars) line that would put us onto the arch itself during descent: something called Orange Sunshine clocking in at the French grade of 5 and 300 meters long. Easy and low angle slab and groove climbing on the lower half and slightly more interesting sandy slab and groove climbing on the upper half. Even if the climbing was only OK, the views of the yellow sand desert below were excellent. We topped out on Burdah’s ridge and hiked down via a Bedouin scrambling route somehow missing the scenic abseil onto the arch (only caught a glimpse of it from below – oh well). Khaled and his family were waiting for us at the base having made a traditional Bedouin loaf of bread baked in the sand (some of the best tasting bread we’ve had).

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The following day we hiked up to near Lawrence’s Spring above Wadi Rum and climbed the classic Pillar Of Wisdom route clearly visible from the Rest House. The guidebook calls this an 11 pitch route but there are 3+ “approach” pitches rated up to 5 depending on the exact choice of line up The Pedestal. The climbing difficulty never exceeds 5+ until the very final exit pitch onto the summit which is rated 6b but is well protected by three bolts. The climbing was fun and never mundane with progressively more spectacular views towards the top. We topped out before 2pm and were sort of expecting the descent down Hammad’s Route to be a pain (a long combo of much scrambling and some 5+ pitches mixed in). Holy freaking maze of domes! Some scrambling around and eventually rolling our own rap station off a bush put us at the cairn marking the intercept point with Hammad’s Route. There were indeed plenty of cairns once on Hammad’s unfortunately they diverged in multiple directions. Wasted quite a few hours following (well cairned) dead ends before finally stumbling onto the correct path. Not intuitive…at least to us and I don’t think I could really offer much beta beyond that if I tried! Once the first (3 meter) abseil was found, the rest of the route was easy to follow. Couple more rappels put us in the Great Siq (the obvious canyon visible from the Rest House that empties a few hundred feet above the ground) but we were chasing daylight at that point. Out of the Siq and into a gully ending with a drop off into darkness. At that point we were not sure (book is vague here) whether to follow a ridge per Hammad’s Route (did not seem logical) or look for abseils into the void. We stumbled around but could not find further clues with our small headlamps. We saw numerous fire rings. We built a small fire, gathered enough twigs to last a night and settled in for a fairly comfy evening under a clear Jordanian sky. A search of the backpack revealed an orange and a piece of mystery nutrition bar…funny, neither of us recalled ever buying it so it must’ve been well aged. In the morning we found the rap station some 100 feet of 4th class terrain below our bivy. Two rappels and a 30 minute hike put us back in the Rest House in time for a leisurely breakfast. By noon the weather was once again changing for the worse with thick clouds and intermittent sandstorms.

Photos

Orange Sunshine

Pillar Of Wisdom

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Go back to Jordan – First Trip