Into the hills once more
Stairway to Heaven, Ras al Khaimah
There’s an old shepherd’s route known as Stairway to Heaven that links an Omani mountain village with the coast in what is now Ras al Khaimah.
It’s famous in the UAE and I’d been trying to organise a trip to do it for most of the time I’ve been here.
Finally the Abu Dhabi Alpine Club decided to go, for the day after Wadi Bih relay race in Musandam.
Because there’s a long history of ‘mares on the route, we made a pre-dawn start and immediately had a distinctly New Zealand back-country experience of several kilometres scrambling up a bouldery riverbed and then a freaking steep climb up loose rubble. Read more.
Snake Gorge via ferrata, Oman
Nothing quite brings home just how flat Abu Dhabi is than finding yourself on the Snake Canyon via ferrata in Oman.
Just a few hours after leaving the unrelenting pancakedness on UAE capital on the Arabian Gulf, you can be hanging from a thin wire cable 100m up a vertical canyon wall.
What this means in practice is that while the left side of your brain is following its traditionally analytical and rational role by assessing that the cable is overengineered and has been tested by hundreds of previous adventurers, the intuitive and emotional right side of the brain is screaming OHMYGODIAMABOUTTODIE. Read more.
Crouching Tiger, Thieving Monkey
“See this!” the English woman said, turning to show where the back of her shorts bore a muddy and obviously simian handprint. “We got attacked by the monkeys.”
It’s not every day that a complete stranger shows me their rear end, but reaching the summit of Emei Shan in southern China meant we had all run the gauntlet of marauding monkeys and it seemed familiarity grew from experiencing this fellowship of primate aggression. Read more.
Arabia’s highest peak
The highest peaks are known for often having a sting in the tail, a final difficulty which threatens to thwart a successful ascent.
On Everest’s Nepalese side, there’s the Hillary Step between the south summit and the highest place on the planet. On the Tibetan side, there’s the Second Step that has to be surmounted on summit day.
On Aoraki-Mount Cook, there’s the all-too-active icefall known as the gunbarrels, followed by the treacherous mixed rock and ice of the summit rocks. On Aconcagua, there’s the energy-sapping Canaletta just below the top.
And on Jabal an-Nabi Shu’ayb, the highest peak on the Arabian peninsula, there are eight soldiers with AK-47s. Read more.
The UAE’s highest mountain
Scaling the highest peak in the United Arab Emirates is not for the fainthearted. First, to paraphrase Mrs Beeton, you have to find your mountain.
This was not as easy as it might seem. Understandably enough, mountain climbing is not a big thing in the UAE but nobody seemed entirely sure which one was the nation’s highest mountain. Read more.
Denial on Denali
The defining moment on Denali for me came on the eleventh day, when I was slumped over my ice axe gasping for breath as I headed up the ice headwall between Camp Four and the high camp from which you head to the summit.
As I tried to extract as much oxygen as I could out of the thin air at around 4700m, I heard an indeterminately eastern European climber behind me say: “This is craziness… but it’s magnificent craziness.” I agreed and would have said so if that hadn’t required me to divert breath from replenishing my blood-oxygen levels. Read more.
Fuji sea to summit
“A man is a fool not to climb Mount Fuji once,” the Japanese saying goes, “and a fool to climb it twice.”
I pondered the epigram as I made my way up Japan’s highest peak for the second time, the day after Fuji had delivered a lesson in hubris that prompted my ignominious retreat. Read more.