Mountain Hiking Scare

I'm on spring break this week and we have had a very busy week. We decided to go camping again, this time just the two of us. We mapped out our route with the GPS and google earth and prepared all of our camping gear. Thanks to Colleen's handy Off Roading in the UAE book it was easy planning. (Thanks Colleen) We chose route 24 to Madbah, a town or village ... Um maybe just a couple houses in Oman. There were waterfalls and pools to swim in so I was excited. We left Sunday (3-27 ) morning and drove about 45 minutes until we turned left and began the dirt road portion of our trip. We drove into a wadi (dried up old river bed) until the rocks didn't allow the Jeep to go anymore. Then we got out and walked to explore. There were 2 local men pumping water from these BEAUTIFUL baby blue ponds. They had a whole irrigation system set up to pump the water into these canals and provide water for the neighboring farms. I just hoped they hadn't emptied all the ponds, I really wanted to swim.

But as for these first couple ponds, the water was amazing - it was such a milky blue color and the rocks around it were covered in white stuff. Not sure if it was sulfer or what - maybe someone can enlighten me on that. So we walked past these guys, Saul said assalamu alaykum - which means Peace be upon you but its a way of saying hello. The men responded with a whole bunch of arabic, way too fast for us to understand anything. We said hello in English and they just nodded so we kept walking. Saul gets a whole lot of Arabic, everyone here thinks he's a local. They're always shocked to find out he's American, even the customs officer at the airport who is holding his American passport lol. So as we walked deeper into the wadi we found our first large pond with a small waterfall - I was excited cause I could definitely swim in this. But I remember a picture from the book had a much bigger waterfall so we climbed the wall to the left of the small waterfall and walked around the next corner (rock/mountain corners) and there it was the BIG waterfall. Well it was more like a stream running down the rock but it was still pretty. Not big enough for swimming but nice enough to set up our 75 AED ($20) tripod and take a picture. After that we walked back to the car to get lunch and bathing suits.

 We had tuna sandwiches next to the swimming pond and then jumped in for a quick dip. The guppies in the pond gave you a pedicure, people pay money for this. They sucked on the bottom of our feet lol. It was extremely ticklish and I'm not sure I liked it very much but Saul let them do it so I could get some pictures. He claims that one of the bigger fish nabbed his leg while he was swimming but I'm not so sure lol. At about 4pm we said its time to go find a good camping spot. So we walked back to the car and started the drive up the mountain. It was a rough drive! Very bumpy - way too many rocks but I guess that's why they call it off road. Once we found the spot where the book says to camp, we looked around and said nope, we don't like it let's keep going up. I was set on camping on the plateau. So we bumped, winded and found our way up the path. The book said this place had amazing views. When we reached the flat area we followed the path to the cliff and noticed an area in between two mountains which I said would be perfect for camping. We parked the car by the edge of the cliff and explored a little before setting up camp. We climbed down and found more pools, much bigger than our previous swimming pond. We would save that one for swimming tomorrow. Saul picked up an inner tube and we were going to try and fill it up with our pump. It was obvious many people used this pond for swimming and jumping - it was much bigger and deeper than the last one. So we went back to the car and drove over to the right side of the cliff - this is where the AMAZING views were. WOW! Oman is beautiful! We could even see our smaller pool down below and the baby blue ponds. We decided that this would be a perfect sunset spot so we went over to the valley to the right of the plateau, to set up camp. We had about 2 hours before sunset. So we rushed to set up our tent and build the BBQ.

Once we were settled I noticed our little valley went all the way to the end of the mountain range and I wondered if we could walk through the valley to see the sunset. But we went around and walked across the plateau to the corner of the cliff to see the sunset. There was a group of about 10 goats wandering around and I got tons of pictures of them. We still had about 30 minutes before sunset. So we started following a path on the side of the mountain - trying to find a perfect sunset spot. As we walked along this path, probably created by the goats I decided that if we walked far enough we could find the valley for our campsite without having to go back through the plateau. So we kept going, ending up climbing, using our hands and feet to get across and over some areas of the mountain. I was being quite adventurous. Saul turned around after about 15 minutes and said "do you know how to get back?" I looked over my shoulder and everything looked exactly the same, brown and gray rocks and rocks lol. I said "don't worry, we're not going back we're going to find our campsite this way". He said "um, ok". If anything we'll just retrace our footsteps back, no problem!

Everything was the same, same :)

 We walked for about 10 more minutes and around a couple more corners and I decided we needed to turn here that our campsite had to be at the other side of this mountain. So we started climbing up, up, up! It got very narrow and the walls were closing in on us. But it made it easier cause I used my hands to pull me higher and higher. Then we reached a wall. I said (in my head) uh oh, we may have to turn back. But then I noticed there were rocks sticking out of the wall so I propped myself up and in a second I was up. Super easy! Saul handed me the backpack and he climbed up. We kept hiking. I said its going to be right over that peak. I can feel it! I was moving faster and faster! I don't even know where the energy came from. When I got to the top of the peak and I sat on it to observe what was on the other side, I thought I was going to scream! No! It can't be! More and more and more mountain peaks! Where is my campsite? Saul dropped the backpack and scurried up to see what I was complaining about. I said ok, I'm done making decisions! You decide do we keep going or turn back. I was dreading having to go down that climb - going down is so much harder! Saul said sorry, we gotta go back. He marked the spot with his phone so we could look at the GPS later and see how far we were. It was getting dark, we didn't bring a flashlight, we don't have cell phone service in Oman so we needed to hurry up and get back. I sat on my butt and started sliding down but that wasn't very efficient. So I stood up and kept climbing/sliding. The rocks were very lose and there wasn't much to hold on to. We climbed down and down and down, before we knew it we were basically at the bottom of the mountain - NOT good. We were supposed to turn left at some point in order to find the path. So we started zig zagging towards the left cause we couldn't walk straight without some sort of path. My idea wasn't such a great one, huh? And now we need to hurry up and find our way back to the plateau cause if not we're going to be spending the night on the side of a mountain with goats lol. We kept going and going, it felt like forever. We were covered in sweat, Saul wanted to sit and catch his breath for a minute I was panicking that it was getting dark and we needed to keep moving.

Overlooking the cliff - next morning before going home

We reached the edge of the mountain and we figured let's climb up and we'll find it. We started climbing up and up and up and it was never ending, we couldn't find the opening where we had come out of. I was climbing on my hands and feet cause it was so steep! We heard the last call to prayer and I said we need to get moving! It went through my head only once to give up cause we had about 5 minutes of sunlight left. We kept going higher and higher and higher AND finally we saw it. We reached the peak of a rock overlooking the plateau.
(In the picture above, the small hill to the left of us is where we ended up after being lost)
We sat down and drank the rest of our water, super thankful to be safe. The goats were settling down at the edge of the cliff, probably getting ready to spend the night there. We sat for about 5 minutes and walked back along the plateau in the dark (dusk). When we got to the campsite we started the barbecue and made our campfire. We made delicious burgers and went to sleep!  Right away! That scare made us very tired. We noticed there was no moon in the sky so if we hadn't made it in time, there wouldn't have been ANY light for us to keep traveling out there on the mountain. Thankfully, we didn't get to that point. We tried to sleep and both of us tossed and turned for most of the night. It was really hard to sleep - the wind scared me. Every sound made me restless. I think that scare in the mountains really freaked us out. Plus we had just seen the movie 127 hours - the poor guy got stuck and had to cut his arm off. Not a good movie to see before going out mountain hiking. We heard the 5am call to prayer and kept trying to sleep. By 6am we were up, cooking breakfast and getting ready to go home! Our bodies hurt from head to toe, no swimming, no hiking, no 2nd night of camping for us. We were exhausted and we wanted to go home! So that's just what we did... had breakfast, packed up our stuff and drove home. Once we got home we took showers and slept for about 4 hours, probably the best nap of my life. It's great to be back in my own bed :)