Build My Own FeedBD athlete Alex Honnold reports from Wadi Rum, Jordan
Black Diamond athlete Alex Honnold is touring around the Middle East and Eastern Europe for the winter and sent us the following report regarding a memorable adventure on the sandstone walls of Wadi Rum, Jordan.
Sometimes what sounds like a genius plan turns out to be the beginning of an epic saga. This wasn't quite a genius plan, and didn't quite turn into an epic, but it had the potential for both.
I was in Wadi Rum, Jordan with my partner Amit Tawfik, climbing on fun sandstone walls and enjoying the amazing scenery and culture. We'd been there for about a week, mostly by ourselves, and things were getting a little grim. The short version is that it had gotten super cold, it had been raining a bit, the roof started to leak, I got some kind of stomach issue that left me too weak to climb for a day, and the local folks hadn't been bothering to open their shops because there was no one in town. Basically, we needed a good plan to rally us through the next few days.
We had three days left before wanting to go back to Israel for a sport-climbing event. With a lot of deliberation we settled on this: going to Petra for a day of tourism, taking the bus back the next morning and climbing Jebel Rum (the highest peak around), and then climbing the route Dar el Salam (which turned out to be the hardest route we did in Jordan) on our last day.
The day of tourism at Petra was amazing. Two-thousand-year-old buildings carved into solid sandstone walls, paved Roman streets, a monastery high on top of it all overlooking the Dead Sea. It felt like a fantasy. But this is supposed to be about climbing, so I'll skip to the next morning.
We took the bus back to Wadi Rum at 6am, grateful that the bus was actually running that day (we'd had one never show up a few days before). While eating a breakfast feast we hatched our scheme for the day. The local Bedouins have complicated, weaving routes up most of the impressive formations around. These Bedouin routes aren't technically very hard, but they have devious routefinding and can take some time to figure out. Amit would solo one of these Bedouin routes to the top of Jebel Rum and I would try to meet him on top by soloing one of the classic crack lines in the area, Lionheart. We agreed that he would wait for me for an hour or two once he got up there since my route was more complicated and much further away.
Without letting this get too involved, the route that I went to solo turned out to be harder than I expected, and I was climbing in my blown-out sport shoes with no chalk bag because we'd already stashed all our climbing gear at the base of Dar el Salam a few days before. The real crusher, though, turned out to be when I topped out and realized how far away the summit of Jebel Rum was. I'd hiked about an hour from town across flat desert to get to the route, now I was about that same distance from the summit, but instead of flat desert it was all cliffs, chasms and ramps. Basically it was the most complicated topography I could imagine. I took a quick stock of the situation: I had almost no food or water since I hadn't wanted to carry anything up the route, no headlamp, and about four hours until dark. I wasn't sure if it was possible to make it all the way across to Jebel Rum, but I didn't really want to downclimb Lionheart (an 800-foot 5.10d, with a 10a corner pitch that was swarming with red ants]. I tightened up my approach shoes and set out at a brisk pace.
I attempted the directissima. Every time I hit a cliff I would just go down one side and back up the other—within reason. I couldn't be bothered to search for the easiest route—I didn't really have time. I just forced the line straight towards the summit. I only had to back track once, and while it didn't cost too much time it certainly hurt my spirits. The uncertainty drove me faster. Every time I dropped down into another little canyon I'd lose sight of all the surrounding formations and I worried that I might lose my bearings.
There were several smaller peaks before Jebel Rum and after an hour or two of break-neck scrambling I'd lost track of which ones were which. I wasn't sure exactly which was the tallest so I didn't know quite where to steer. But then amazingly I saw Amit standing on top of one of the peaks in the distance, perfectly backlit and looking heroic. I yelled to him, hoping that he wouldn't leave before I managed to find my way.
In writing this doesn't seem quite as exciting as it was at the time. I was very worried that I would be benighted on top of the mountain, which would have been super unpleasant, if not a little dangerous, since it was getting so cold at night. But as it turned out we were both down in time for dinner and it was all just a fun story.
Of my whole trip to Jordan, this turned out to be the most exciting day of climbing. I think it was because of all the unknown and the whole sense of adventure that accompanied the traverse. The other routes that we climbed were all the same in a way; we climbed a route, rapped back down, and called it a day. But this was more uncertain. And far more rewarding.
— Alex
United States / English 
9 Feb 2012, 9:27PM
Sometimes it isn't as exciting in the retelling. There aren't a lot of words for "it was getting dark and I was a little scared." But if you've been in those kinds of situations before -- places were death isn't an entirely remote possibility -- then you know what's being talked about. I don't free solo, but I do get myself into some really hairy spots traveling. Glad you made it out alright.