Run, Mountain, Run

Matt: In my infinite wisdom, pure clarity of mind and stable state, I thought that after coming back from South Africa, where incidentally I went down with a bout of the flu, I would agree to run the Wadi Bih Relay..with merely a week to train and a get rid of a nasty chesty cough left over from the flu. Genius!!

What was I thinking??

The Wadi Bih Run: I 76km run through the Haja Mountain, broken down into stages, climbing to 1100 metres. The relay is for a team of up to 5 and you can split the sections however you see fit, the longest of which being around 6km. Mental.

Paul Louzado, somehow convinced us to join in. Making up 2 teams, team Road Runner and team Wile E. Coyote. We set off from Dibba beach at a little after 8am and proceeded to run for the next 6 hours, the support car would drive on to the next check-point for the swap over, so some legs of the run were very long and lonely affairs, but through the majestic Haja Mountains, rugged cliffs raising up on either side of you, funneling you on to the next bend in the trail.. occasionally rounding these bends the track would open out to wide wadi bed with impressive view of the vista ahead.

Overall a wholly rewarding exercise, with 62 teams entering, couldn't be all that bad, could it??

Well done to both our teams for completing the run respectably.

Yep - if you look hard enough at the pic above you can see me on the road ahead..this was the flat gravel road before climbing into the mountains!! Before I nearly died from exhaustion..

This weekend - Stairway to Heaven Hike....(sanity check optional)

Made it

Matt: Amanda's Back!! yep Miss Darby has returned to sunny Dubai for a holiday. It's great to see her and no doubt, with the twosome reunited (Naomi and Amanda) they'll be causing trouble around town.

Well I finally managed to get a crew together to attempt the Jungle Book Hike again, We left Dubai at 8:30 on Friday morning and drove to Ras Al Khaimah, met a few other in RAK and then headed for the intrepid Wadi Bih. After rallying the cars around so that we didn't have to walk back down the Wadi - we set off.
It was a tough walk, again clambering over huge boulders or up scree. But it was good - there were a few walls on the route, but nothing too tricky. They most difficult part was a 3 metre face of very smooth rock. A knotted rope was left here, but due to the smoothness of the rock even with this is was very difficult. So we set about making a harness form my rope and taking some of the climber weight with that. Everyone got up without event.

The last 45 minutes was exhausting, climbing a 45-60 degree scree slope top the summit. Everyone did brilliantly though and are keen for the next adventure. A few of us camped at a spot Cris and I discovered a few weeks back. Though not much sleep was had, the wind was ferocious. But it was a great trip.
Thanks to all who come along and made it worthwhile.

Cris conquers the wall... the drop behind her is about 20 feet, I'm on a ledge below.

Melissa's turn..

The Crew - Well done all.
From left to right: John, Emily, Justin, Matt, Melissa, Julia, Fiona, Cris
Mike, Rene and Ahmed are the wrong side of the camera...

Can't wait to arrange the next one, maybe this weekend.

Hiking in Oman

Matt: The weather was perfect and we felt the need to get out an make the most of it, So Naomi and I decided a hike was the order of the day! Flicking through the pages of our UAE Off-road Explorer we decided to attempt "The Hanging Gardens" just across the border of Oman. After cramming the cool box with water, camel packs, provisions and ice, we slung all in the Paj, donned our hiking boots and hit the road.

Only 1.5 hours and we were at the Omani border post in Al Ain, a little paper work and 20 dirhams and we're through, this is where the fun begins. We're driving along an open road through arid terrain, remote with a background of a high escarpment, knowing the imposing cliff were our destination, but having to find an elusive off-road track to get there. The track was suppose to be obvious, but since a 4 deep trench had been dug all along the roadside, finding it was proving tricky and if we did find it, getting across the trench was the next challenge. Well, we eventually found a point to cross the trench and backtracked across a rugged landscape in an attempt to find the track we were hoping for. The satellite image in our Explorer showed we had to be north of a mountain ridge-line - guessing the the ridge depicted was the one we were currently south of we headed north, circumventing the impassible and started heading inland in the hope that we were on a parallel route to the desired track.
I spotted a deep cleft in the silhouette of the escarpment shaped like a 'V' there was mention of this in our guide, so we crawled on in the hope to find our track. Well we found tracks, but had no real way of knowing if they were right or wrong, we just continued following over the rough terrain, through dry river beds and over rocky verges toward the 'V'.. eventually we were given hope as another landmark was spotted, high up the steep scree slope, nestled at the base of the cliff, I spotted the dark recess of a cave, this was part of our intended route. We headed down a very rocky track and parked near the base of the scree slope in deep valley of rock, we a weak stream running through it. This was it.. the beginning of the hike.
The rest was an exhilarating walk, climb, jump, scramble through the impressive vista of the Omani Fossil Valley. With never an even footing we scaled massive scree slopes, huge rocks and into deep ravines. The valley was like something from a old Star Trek episode depicting a hot, harsh alien landscape. Enjoy the pics...