How to get there:
The normal point of reference would be the city of Tabuk in northern Saudi Arabia.
This city has pretty good airline connections, at least domestic flights.
There are two good roads to a key road fork at location 28.68453, 35.41395.
The south route has (2024) a couple of short dirt road sections, but is a perfectly
good road, about 150 kilometer. The northern route is about 170 kilometer, paved all
the way. My trailhead for this climb is located about 4.5 kilometer south of this key road fork.
Locate a small dirt road that heads west. A normal car may be driven (with care) to location
N28.65358. E035.37607, elevation about 1415 meter. A very rough 4WD track continues, but only a few
hundred meter.
The road running west from "the key fork" serves a huge construction project called Neom,
access on this road is restricted. However, perhaps in the future, one could climb this peak
starting from location N28.66998. E035.31113, elevation about 1760 meter. This option would
offer a very much shorter and easier route to the peak.
Route description:
From the trailhead, continue along the rough 4WD track. It will soon end and there is no trail.
Continue up this canyon. In January, a small creek providing fresh water was present.
The canyon is full of boulders and rocks of all sizes often making progress quite cumbersome.
There is a canyon fork near location N28.652, E35.348, elevation about 1660 meter. Make certain
to turn sharply right here, the canyon straight ahead is NOT correct.
When you reach elevation 1960 meter, exit the canyon right, avoid steep terain and continue above it parallel
until near elevation 2100 meter. From here, the terrain is much more hiker friendly.
Finally, near location N28.655, E35.328, near elevation 2200 meter, exit the canyon on your right side
ascending gradually to 2350 meter while heading west. You should start a significan 200 meter descent from
near location N28.6557, E35.3196, elevation about 2300 meter. You should reach a col near
location N28.6538, E35.31444, elevation slightly below 2100 meter.
From here, climb uphill, going more right in the beginning, higher up traversing left.
Next, before reaching the south-west shoulder, traverse right (north-east) to merge with
the big canyon coming up from the north.
The easiest route is certainly YDS class 3, one may hit class 4 passages as well.
What remains is a pretty much direct ascent
to the (false) summit (south-west). Cross this, then a last slope to the summit ridge, the
final step being again (YDS) class 3. You will arrive at a summit flag pole.
There is a short summit ridge with several large boulders. The absolute highest point
is located on top of a huge boulder with smooth, vertical sides. It is very possible that
it remains unclimbed. A party of 2 could get a climbing rope
across the top then climb it using a couple of jumars (ascenders).
Note I:This peak is the highest in a pretty large area. Almost all people
in Saudi Arabia, including information in written guides, claim that the highest peak
is the peak 4 kilometer north, hosting a military base with restricted road access.
However, based on my sight leveler, it is clear that that peak is indeed significantly lower.
Note II:A much shorter and easier route (still YDS class 3) would be to
start from the Neom site.
This may be possible in the future. See the description of my
descent under TR/Comments below.
TR/Comments:
This was quite an adentureous climb in very remote and cumbersome terrain. A younger, experienced
person can certainly do this in shorter time, but should still calculate more time than what is
normal in terrain that is more friendly. By pure luck, I was able to touch base with Javier from
Spain. He used to live in Saudi Arabia and provided valuable route information.
I had attempted to rent a car in Tabuk the way I normally do, that is via a WEB page. However,
several tries failed. I believed I had finally succeeded with Sixt car rentals when they mailed
me a confirmation. Then, just days ahead of my arrival, I got an email saying that they
would not rent me a car after all, then politely wishing me back as a customer in the future?
Really bad behavior, they should learn this business from other countries.
I arrived Tabuk on an early morning flight from Jeddah, and went straight to the car rental counters in the
airport. The queue in front of Budget was smaller, so I decided to try there first. To rent an SUV?
No, that was not possible, but a more ordinary car - yes. OK, they offered me a Ford Taurus, OK.
The next 30 minutes two agents were busy doing paperwork. Quite incredible, but they did
slowly converge to the point where I got the car key and they got my credit card payment.
Google selected the (shortest) southern driving route. I coached the car carefully the last kilometer
to the trailhead, arriving there shortly before 1300.
A little organizing, then ready to walk around 1315. I first followed the remaining 4WD track to
the entrance of the canyon.
Several camels were walking around in this area.
Next, continue into this canyon,
I quickly realized that this walk would be non-trivial.
I carried quite many (small) bottles of water, but
soon noticed that I could find water in a small creek
draining the canyon. Still, I decided to cache one bottle after
1.5 hours of hiking, a nice thing to find on my return hike. The temperature was not
at all high, so the need for drinking water clearly less than what I had planned for.
Higher up in the canyon,
progress was suddenly a bit easier,
but the terrain ahead looked pretty bad.
Then I noticed that I had failed to see the canyon fork where my route would
go right, I was now in the wrong canyon. This did not cost much, I backtracked and made a short-cut
left in order to get things back in good order.
My plan had been to get to the saddle at the base of the mountain, then take an overnight there
and climb the peak the next morning. However, progress was much slower than imagined and I noticed
that the day was about to end.
The terrain was still pretty cumbersome,
but I wanted to make the next day as short as possible.
I carried 2 torch lights and decided to carry on using the one
running on AA batteries. After close to one hour, I spotted a flat slab rock near the bottom
of the canyon and decided to sleep there. Unfortunately, I also noticed that the small case holding
4 AA batteries for my light was broken and that batteries could fall out unless care was exercised.
I carried a very old sleeping bag, only useful for summer, as well as an inflatable mattress
that had a slow leak, that I had been unable to find and fix. The night was colder than expected,
but I did catch some sleep between having to inflate the matress 3-4 times. The trick was to go back
to sleep before the matress would feel uncomfortable.
I woke up around 3 AM, it had been a long night. Now, I had to make a decision about gear.
The best plan for making better progress would be to leave 2 bottles of water, the sleeping bag
and the matress at this camp. Then retrieve this on my return hike. Still, I also considered
what to do if progress continued to be slow and thus the return hike would take me into a second
night. Not a good prospect with a reservation at the Five Seasons Hotel back in Tabuk for
the following night. A Plan B would be to descend more north to the area where construction
of the Trojena part of the Neom project was going on. In that case, I should ideally carry
everything. In the overall situation, the loss of this (old and partly broken) gear would be acceptable
given that Plan B would be needed.
Thus, I left around 0330 and continued up the canyon. My light soon revealed a steepish section of
rock ahead. It seemed to provide some footholds and I started a class 3 climb. Half way up,
this climb turned harder than expected. Thus, in order to not run any risk, I decided to reverse
my moves and get back down. This was a bit awkward and suddenly a battery fell out of its case
and left me in complete darkness. I was not happy about the situation. The only way to get safely
down would be to find my spare light in the backpack. After careful and slow moves, I finally had
a light that could guide me back down. There, I also recovered the lost battery. I had decided to
save my best torch light for later use.
The terrain became much more hiker friendly and I made better progress up the shallow valley to
a distinct col from where I could see lights to the north-west. Unfortunately, the steep canyon
that went down from here was not my planned route and going off to my right was not good either.
I should have paid more attention, thus for the second time on this hike I needed to backtrack
a bit in order to move more north. Fortunately, the terrain stayed good and I soon arrived
at the top of the hillside leading about 200 vertical meter down to the base of my mountain.
It was still dark, I sort of had expected daylight by 0600, but in January, the light would
not arrive until after 0700.
If the ascent that remained would be reasonable, then I should have time to stay with Plan A, a long
but well known route back to my car. This did not happen. Route finding up from this side
was again non trivial. Huge blocks of rocks and cliffs everywhere. I tried to gain elevation as soon
as I spotted a way uphill. This worked, but with several short sections of class 3 climbing.
Time was running and I now could see the Plan B canyon running down more to the north. It did not
look trivial, but of course much shorter. I climbed easier terrain and got to a false summit, what
looked like the true summit now quite close.
A last section of
class 3, I could now see what had to be the summit.
I decided to leave my
hiking poles below and tackle this head on. Finally, at
0840, I was on the summit of Jabal al-Lawz!
The ascent had taken me about 5 hours. Obviously, the return, knowing the route in daylight
would be much shorter. Still, to be conservative, it would likely be dark before reaching
the car. I just had to accept that this kind of epic hike would have been easier 10 years ago.
The decision was pretty clear, I would go for Plan B and get back down to people in a shorter
amount of time. Then, of course, I needed to catch some ride with someone to get back to my
trailhead. Well, worry about this later.
It was a nice morning, but still cold. Water had frozen to ice.
The official summit was marked by a pole with a small
flag on top. However, I also noticed a big boulder more west that possibly looked higher.
First priority was to get a line of sight across north to a summit with a military
base. This summit is off-limits (it has a road), you can only get to a military closed
gate on the north side. Still, all official Saudi information and numerous web-pages claim
that this military top is the highest point in the area. Satellite radar measurements indicate
the opposite, that the mountain I now had climbed is indeed the ultra prominent peak in this area.
I brought a sight leveler in order to settle this matter.
Looking across, I could see a few
buildings, but my leveler needed to be raised significantly in order to be horizontal, ie.
have the bubble between the bars. Thus, the north summit was not even close, it is
quite a bit lower.
Next, I walked over to the big boulder.
Its east side certainly looked impossible, but perhaps
there would be a route from the west side? Unfortunately, the answer was no. This boulder has
pretty vertical, smooth rock on all sides.
You would need a ladder or a team of two could throw
a rope across, anchor it and use a couple of jumars (ascenders) to get on top. I do not think
it may reasonably be climbed in any other way. Most likely, nobody has ever been on
top of it.
I took a couple of more pictures of the view,
there are several more peaks in this area that
are well above 2400 meter, some perhaps near 2500. Peakbagger have this summit at only
2518 meter, while my Garmin GPSMAP 67 settled at 2556 meter. This is a difference of
38 meter, the elevation should most likely be adjusted up.
I left at 0900, feeling that a 20 minute break was well deserved. The descent was uneventful.
This canyon also has a fair
amount of obstacles
and places where one should exit and bypass
trouble on the side. I took some brief rests along the way. My left foot was painful, some
inflammation that has bothered me since September. I finally emerged onto a big flat
construction area with all sorts of heavy machinery and dozens of big trucks driving around.
Who knows if somebody would notice me and get mad, I decided to just proceed
across the big flat, dusty area pretending to be fully authorized.
I said hello to a couple of local workers, they did not seem concerned that a foreign guy
with a backpack suddenly emerged from the mountain onto a very busy construction site with
big trucks and heavy equipment moving around. I walked
across the big, completely flat area
to find the main road. After about a minute, a vehicle (that was not a truck!) came in my direction.
I put out my thumb to ask for a ride and he immediately stopped. Driving onwards, he promptly
offered me a bottle of water. His name was Nouman, a local geologist. It turned out that he
had some relation to and knowledge of the city of Stavanger in Norway. Small world.
We drove east and talked about various subjects, he asked if I had obtained all the
paperwork and permissions to hike in these mountains. I answered a brief "Yes".
We stopped
at the gate, he did some small talk with the guard and signed a big book of registration. I zipped
to my water bottle and did not participate. Nouman insisted on driving me all the way back
to my car, thus an extra 10 kilometer out of his way. Big thanks are due to him for making
my rather strenuous trip conclude in a great way.
I next drove back to Tabuk and located 5 Seasons hotel, near the airport where I had a
reservation for the night. Great welcome by the general manager. A free room upgrade and
some fresh fruit served to my room. I subsquently located an Indian restaurant nearby
for dinner. Looking forward to catching up on some lack of sleep, I slept early.
Next morning, a good breakfast that came with the room, returning my car at the airport,
then checking in for my flight to Yanbu via Jeddah.
