South Hike

Today we awoke at 4AM to go hiking in the desert. The ONLY things i had on the hike were my clothes, hat, sunglasses, backpack, 4 liters of water, crocks and shoes. It was heavily stressed to us that EVERYTHING gets soaked on the hike. EVERYTHING. Part of the group did the hike last week and said that it was possible but difficult to avoid getting your running shoes wet if you have crocks or sandals with you. This became my mission for the hike. We started hiking at 7AM and hiked uphill for 45 minutes before we started repelling. The remainder of the hike involved 7 repels and 3 cliffs to jump off of into water.
After the second repel there was a large pool of water (the water was disgusting because it was remnants of flood water) that we had to walk through. This pool was about 15 feet long. As I was changing out of my shoes and into crocks, my friend at the other end said the water was not that deep and only up to my thighs. The second step I took into the water I sank like a sack of bricks. Instinctively my hand that was holding the shoes shoots straight up in the air above my head. As I'm sinking and attempting to keep my head and shoes above water I can see and hear laughter at the other end. I struggled to swim with one hand as my crocks are about to slip off my feet. I survived and somehow managed to keep my shoes dry. After I caught my breath and pointed out my friends were jerks we had a good laugh as we played the same trick on the people behind us.

The next pool of sludge water we got to I was able to throw my shoes across to someone else and then leap off a 10 foot cliff into the water. After climbing out of the water soaking wet again I then had to throw my shoes off a 30 foot cliff and far enough to cross the 15 foot pool of water. As I repelled down the cliff I had to release myself in mid-air lying horizontal to the water, and fall in.

The last pool of water was about 20 feet long and again I threw my shoes across before I had to jump in. As the shoes were in the air, my heart stopped. After all my efforts to keep my shoes dry it looked like I did not throw them far enough and they would land in the water. The shoes bounced off the front face of a rock and I thought oh no, the shoes are going to bounce back into the water. Thankfully the momentum forced the shoes onto dry land and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The largest repel we had to do was over 100 feet high. Half way down the cliff, the rockface dissapeared and there was a huge cave and nowhere to put my feet. At this point I had no idea what to do. I couldn't see the instructor at the top so I couldn't as him what to do. If I released the rope further I would have lost my foothold and swing and be dangling in the air bouncing off the cliff face. There was only one person around and he was at the bottom of the cliff but he had gone down the cliff on a different rappeling line. He had no idea what to do either. The only option was to go with it and keep releasing myself and hope for the best. I ended up dangling and not holding onto anything as I lower myself the rest of the way to the ground.

After one of the repels

Jon, Matt, Me and Marty at the top of the hike overlooking the dead sea and the Jordanian mountains

It was antoher 45 minute hike until we got back tot he bottom at the bus. The hike was amazing, but we were told that we are doing a hike next week which is even better than this one. I can't wait. After the hike we went to the Ein Gedi spring. We relaxed and finally got to swim in some cleaner water.

Marty, Matt and I jumping into the water

After hanging out there for a bit we went to the dead sea to float. We finally got back to Jerusalem in the evening after a very long but awesome 15 hour day.