The Mt. Sinai Expedition

     This blog will cover days 10 and 11 in which Jack and went on an adventure to summit Mt. Sinai (Mount Moses in Egypt) and succeeded. And it all started at 5:15 AM… much to early for either one of us to be waking up. I should also preface this by saying I was a lot more sore than I thought I would be when I woke up the morning following the climb and started my day with two ibuprofen.

Our van just to ourselves. We each got a row to sit in to lay down.

     The night before we had watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother (one of our new favorite shows) before heading to bed. I fell asleep before Jack and apparently he stayed up a little longer to talk to his parents. I only got about 6 1/2 hours of sleep and he got about an hour less than that. We packed our backpacks and went downstairs to meet the tour company that was picking us up. We did not really have a breakfast but the tour did provide some snacks in the form of dried fruit and nuts. We finally met Yehia as well and he explained our itinerary to us. Yehia was recommended to us by Hoda who we made contact with through Jack’s uncle. After doing some paper work we headed out. Jack and I were both exhausted for this drive and there is not a whole lot to see on the way from Cairo to Mt. Sinai but there were a couple highlights. The first, an hour and a half in, is the Suez Canal tunnel. For those of you from Seattle, the tunnel is about the length of the I-90 tunnel. You do not actually see the Suez Canal but you do get to go underneath it. Once on the other side we were technically in Asia which I did not know. We followed the coast and so could look out and see part of the Red Sea. I know understand why some people say the Red Sea has the best snorkeling/diving in the world. The water looked really clear and very inviting. After about four hours of closing my eyes and resting but not necessarily sleeping, I started my new book: The Big Short. It is by the same author as Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis, and it actually helped to read them in that order. Anyways, after 5 ½ hours we made it to Fox Camp. Our drivers dropped us off and then left shortly after. We were not sure what to do so just hung around the camp.

The view for much of the drive.

At times you could see the Red Sea though.

     Fox Camp is located in a very small little town at the foot of the mountain. They do not have air-conditioning but at least have some rooms with mattresses. As you would expect, it was hot and so was our room. The heat made it very difficult to rest so Jack and I sat at tables outside as we read to catch at least a tiny little bit of breeze. They served lunch and afterwards I continued to read. We were able to nap for a short period of time and then went into the cooler breeze again. We had so much free time that I ended up finishing my book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We also decided to walk around the camp and climb some smaller rocks in preparation for the following morning. Eventually, dinner was served and following that we figured we should try to go to bed. We were in bed for an hour or so when there was a knock on our door. It was our driver and our Bedouin guide. They told us to wake up at 1:30 am and be ready to go at 2 am. We set our alarms and went to bed.

Our very hot room with hard pillows...

We brought a wide variety of chips to try and they were all disgusting. Nothing compared to the spice.

FOX CAMP!! That is the mountain we climbed in the background by the way.

Preparing ourselves for the big climb the next day by conquering smaller mounds of rocks.

Practicing on the sunset with some of the settings.

More practice

     At 1:30 am we woke up and I was actually fairly awake for 1:30 am. We got dressed, went to bathroom and were on our way. Our guide, Musa (the name of the mountain in Arabic actually), led us off into the darkness. The amazing thing about our guide which I will tell you now is that he wore flip flops and smoked 4 cigarettes and a joint on the way up the mountain. I just found this hilarious, except when he would blow smoke and it would come right into my face. The first part of the trip was on asphalt and then we made it onto a relatively flat, rocky trail. There was no one else on the trail with us and the night sky was the clearest I had ever seen it. I saw at least five shooting stars. Before we started on the steeper part of the mountain, we took a break and ate some bread with yogurt. We started up some switchbacks one what I guess was the backside of the mountain. We eventually made it to a ridge and took another break. This is when our guide smoked a joint and became a lot more talkative. Before that point we had pretty much walked in silence and it was a time of reflection with the occasional glance up to the night sky only to remark, “damn…”. We continued on and walked by a camel and started seeing other people. Our path met up with the official camel trail that leads up from St. Katherine’s monastery and there we encountered a whole bunch of people. Our guide told us it was not as much as normal though, due to the fact that the monastery is officially closed on Sunday’s to visitors. I had not even realized that we were climbing Mt. Sinai (probably the most religious mountain in the world) on a Sunday. We did not plan it that way. And actually, if we had been planning it perfectly we would have done it during the huge meteor shower a couple of nights before.

     A quick side note that I thought about as we climbed. Katie and myself have this running joke that time does not exist between the hours of 4 and 6:30 AM. I mostly think this because I am never awake at this period and Katie sometimes wakes up at 6 just so she can work out. I think this is insane which is why I tell her time does not exist at that point so it is forbidden to get up that early. Well I hiked through that period in the day and I found out that it does truly exist. I also found out it shouldn't though.

     The camel trail was basically extended switchbacks that led to a staircase. That is where our guide told us to continue on by ourselves while he waited there until we came down. As we walked up the uneven staircase made of rocks, I was particularly glad my mom had given me such a bright flashlight. Again it proved brighter than some of the other much bigger ones we saw. Our guide told us the staircase would take 10 minutes. It definitely did not. After about 7, we took a break and then continued on. I think in the end it took someplace between 15-20 minutes to get to the top but we got there at the perfect time. We could just begin to see the light from the sun coming over the horizon. We stayed at the summit at a place pretty much by ourselves for half an hour, maybe more. In total, I took 150 pictures during the trip, much of them of the sunrise. When I asked my brother the film major what tips he had for taking pictures of sunrises his response was, “Just put it on manual and play around with the settings”. So that is exactly what I did. I think I used almost every setting I had and toyed with the exposure a bunch. One nice thing about a digital camera is you can always just delete the bad ones later. I think I ended up with some good ones though. I took so many my camera ran out of battery, but dont worry I knew this was going to happen and brought my extra battery with me. One thing I thought was funny at the summit, was right when the sun came over the horizon everyone cheered, as if the sun was not going to rise. We then descended back down to our guide and no longer needed a flash light. It was amazing how different the land looked in a new light.

Before sunrise, I chose this one because you can see the different colors of light

Similar but more landscape.

The sun is going to rise... that way

Nice lighting of Jack as stares off into the distance.

Silhouette

Contemplating at the summit

We did it and the sun is rising! Time for the Sun God pose.

Needed to record the time.

Needed one of myself in the classic pose.

Here comes the sun...

Classic

Needed one more silhouette before we went down

Part of the trails

Another angle

The last little bit to the top looking back down. My response, "We came up that??"

     On the way back, we went a different way down: the Steps of Repentance. I wanted to go down this way because I read it had a much better view of the monastery. Musa told us that it was about 3000 steps and these steps go straight down (as you can see from the pictures). I think Jack did a lot more repenting though because his knees are all screwed up from Tennis. One benefit of not doing a high school varsity sport: you do not mess up your body to the point of needing surgery on your shoulder and knees. Poor Jack though.

Arch in the middle of the Steps of Repentance with our guide in the background

3000 steps is a lot of steps

The monastery

Again so you can get a sense of what is around it: nothing

What we climbed down, as I said it was pretty direct

     We reached the monastery at about 7 am and as our guide said, it was closed to visitors. We could poke our head in quickly though and took a couple pictures of the outside. Our guide wanted us to stay an entire extra day so that we could see the monastery when it was open but we declined. A quick note about the monastery. It traces its founding to 330 AD and became a fully functioning monastery in the 6th century. People around the world visit it because inside they claim to have a descendant of the Burning Bush and because it is considered the oldest continually functioning monastery in the world.

Outside the monastery

     We walked back to Fox Camp (thus completing a full circle around the mountain) and started packing. We missed breakfast but our driver said he would figure something out. Jack and I slept for the first 2 hours until we reached a place that our driver said was food. I think it was the worst meal we have had so far but more on that in the nutrition section.

The place we ate questionable food

     After forcing ourselves to eat we continued on and reached Cairo at about 1:50 PM. We reached our hotel at about 3 PM. Needless to say, Cairo traffic is the worst traffic I have experienced. It was stop and go but has TEN lanes on the busy side of the road. I do not think I have ever seen 10 lanes completely stuck before. At the hotel, we finally got a chance to lay down and relax. I also showered the first time in a while and it felt so very nice. I then talked to Katie for a while and then Jack and I went back to Felfela for a third time. Once again, the streets were empty, as was the Metro station. We could see everyone eating tables lay strewn out on sidewalks across the city. It is amazing what religion can do to a city. Once done with dinner I went back to the hotel and conked out.

Nutrition:

     For lunch at Fox camp we got some bread with this beef concoction. For dinner we received some more bread and beef, but they added some rice.

     We did not order our lunch the second day, they just brought out some bread, eggs, salad, hummus, cheese, carrots and tammiya. Tammiya is a traditional Egyptian food, and it is pretty much beans in a bowl. The food from this outpost in the middle of the desert was not very good. “Traditional” Egyptian food is not actually that good in general. The bread and hummus was not as good as we have had it at other places and the carrots were so salty they did not taste like carrots but rather straight salt. It was all so questionable I took a pepto bismol the second I got back in the car. Felfela was good again, I got lamb cutlets and for desert this time I got some rice pudding. It did not disappoint and made up for the “lunch” we had earlier.