UKC

Hey all,

Seriously considering a 2 week trip to the Wadi Rum for the first two weeks in April. Been through most of the googling available - looks epic. Wondering if anyone could offer more guidance on:

- Maybe too hot in April? I assume there are shaded cliffs?

- I see the Wadi Rum itself is mainly 4x4 access. Is it worth having your own 4x4? Or just using local guides once there to get to the more remote cliffs?   

- Other areas other than the Wadi Rum?

Appreciate any other tips - thanks - Xav

Hi Xav

April will be ok, it will be warm in the midday sun but fresh in the morning shade. Take plenty of water. It is possible to climb all year round in Wadi Rum as long as your strategic.  Its a big place so you can always choose an appropriate route depending on conditions.  

renting a 4x4 this depends on how much freedom you want and what routes you want to climb.  If you want to stay in the village or venture out. For 2 weeks i can imagine you'd definitely want to go everywhere.  renting a 4x4 will cost about 60jd/day, this will have to be done in Amman, so you'd need to rent for the whole time really.  In contrast a local 4x4 trip out to some of the very farthest destinations can cost up to 80 JD round trip, but you'll be more likely to be spending on average 40jd per trip.  Lots of routes accessible on foot from the village on jebel rum and rakabat canyon, but bivying  out in the desert is much much nicer.   

Other areas, there is  sport climbing in the north of the country and adventurous wet canyon hikes in the central areas. 

Happy to help if you need any more info.  

I'll be there then, coronavirus permitting!

Hot in the sun but great Climbing in the shade. Pleasant evenings. A lovely time to be there with the flowers out in the desert

Very easy to arrange transport with locals. If you hired your own I imagine you would end up spending s lot more and you would need to know how to drive it!

Could recommend local contacts for camping/accomodation in the village and transport if you like.

If you have read my article on here, the main change since is that people seem not to camp at the Rest House any more but rather arrange alternatives in the village.

Get Tony Howard's guidebook if you havn't already.

In terms of corona virus i think there has only been 1 confirmed case in Jordan.  And there are travel restrictions for non nationals traveling from Iran, Italy, Korea and China. I don't know if this includes transfers. 

There is also some good information on thecrag.com

Anything could happen in three weeks with respect to airports and flights, both in terms of protecting oneself and personal responsibility whether enforced or not.......

I spent 2 weeks in Wadi Rum in January and would say that renting a 4x4 is not necessary. There is enough to go at if your based in the Village. We Took a few Trips out into the Desert via 4x4 which you can arrange in a days notice. Depending on how far your going it will cost between 20 and 40 JOD. We got a Lift into Barra Canyon one morning, climbed, bivvied in the Desert, climbed the next day and got a pick up in the late evening for 30JOD for example. By the time you've climbed whats accesable from the Village and had a couple trips out in to the Desert, your two weeks will be sadly over. 

Other than that, we stayed with Hamdan, at Wadi Rum Village camp. 10JOD a night, 15-20JOD if you want Dinner and breakfast cooked for you. 

I would also suggest getting a SIM card at the airport. So you can use the internet and contact your host etc, (all the Bedouin use WhatsApp)

Your going to have a Great time!

Thanks a lot for the tips - much appreciated! 

Hi Robert - yup had a good read of your article - very helpful. Thanks for the tips and may well see you out there!

Thanks a lot for the tips - much appreciated! 

Cool! We'll be based at Hamdan's Wadi Rum Village Camp, but shall aim to be out in the desert a lot - that's what it's all about for me!

I've climbed all over the world and it's my favorite trad climbing location... (Kalymnos is my favorite sport climbing destination).  A few things to know: There are no local hospitals, no one will fly in and get you if you fall, etc.  So use ALL safety precautions. Including all extra safety knots as you are repelling and extra water and food. There are no local restaurants or grocery stores so bring food with you as you enter the country.  It's at least an hour walk to get to the crag and then you have a good 14 pitches ahead of you.  You're looking at waking up at 5am and not coming back until 7pm.  The location I was in had tents for rent, or you can bring one.  There is something about this place - it's part of "the holy land" and as such, it's like you're climbing with God.  I LOVED being there, and hope you feel the same!!

Joni

The place is insanely over priced because of idiotic people paying £100's a night to stay in posh desert tents. Locals will try and charge u £10 each a night to sleep on a floor. Make sure you don't pay that. If I was there again I'd get a truck (split between 4 be sound) and camp in the desert for most of the time as the locals have you over a barrel for lifts to further afield spots. Trying to charge £40/60 for a 20min journey 

There is restaurants and grocery stores, they just ain't what you'd find in kaly haha

However get crag food in Amman.  Loads of routes that are 15-30min from town. 

Really photogenic and unique landscape. 

This is nonsense. There are local shops in Rum which sell everything you need including stuff suitable as hill food as well as fresh fruit and vegetables.

More nonsense. There are very long routes but there are absolutely loads of shorter ones, some only twenty minutes from the village and which can often be done very comfortably in a quite leisurely day or even a morning. And when out in the desert you can often get dropped off and camp minutes from your route.

I think this paints a very unfair picture of the locals. Given that camp sites in most countries will charge £10 or more, space in a house at this price seems pretty reasonable. I've always found prices to be very fair for what you get and for the service you get in Rum. The local Bedouin are wonderful people, overwhelmingly welcoming and helpful and keen to offer the best service if you treat them, their culture and the desert with respect. Everyone I know of who has stayed in the village has been full of praise for their hosts. They love the desert and just seem keen to make an honest living sharing it with visitors.

There certainly is a major issue with the proliferation of luxury "camps" in the desert but these are mostly entirely inappropriate intrusions by outsiders with no real stake in the area except to make money and which most locals seem vehemently opposed to - they threaten the traditional lifestyle which many seek to preserve.

Plenty of biscuits and snack food suitable for the crag in the village shops.

For guide book stated approach and route times this really depends.  For example if your route is on the east face of jebel rum then the approach is obvious so that's ok.  And if its repel down the route again easy.   

If your route is in a canyon like "the beauty" I would double the approach time if its your first time in the canyon.  For fun I tried to match Tony Howards stated approach time of 45 mins from the village to the beauty.  I have scrambled that approach a dozen times and at scout pace with no gear it still took us 55 mins.  If you have to stop and look at the book and figure out what on earth is going on, and say a lot of "what really?!" then double is very realistic. 

Be prepared to get lost in the canyons and on the summits (especially jebel rum).  And for your first "walk off" descent if it says 15 mins triple it and be prepared to rig an abseil.  Its all part of the fun. 

Someone once said if you onsight the approach your doing well.  

Ha, great line. Going to use this for my lacklustre approach skills.

Absolutely! It can sometimes be a good idea to build tiny cairns to help find your way back, but please dismantle them on your way back so that others' fun is not spoilt. And please DON'T scratch arrows.

As as The Beauty is concerned, it can be a good idea to forget the onsight but rather work the approach as part of a complete crossing of Rakabat Canyon (which makes a pretty much perfect introduction to Rum) and then redpoint the approach efficiently when actually doing the route.

In my experience there have been sufficient cairns in place already. So unless visibility is poor for some reason, if you can't see a cairn on a particularly tricky section you're either not looking hard enough or you're in the wrong place - in either case building new cairns wouldn't be the right thing to do. And if it turned out you were in the wrong place after all, you may end up not returning the same way and leaving a red herring cairn for others.

On the more popular approaches and bedouin routes yes, fair enough, but I was more thinking of those where you very much have to follow your nose and are planning on returning the same way and so can dismantle them. I wouldn't do so where they already exist.

In general yes cairns probably mean your on the right route, but its best not to rely on them as some places have non and some have too many.  

I was once told that Bedouins can also build them as a "don't go that way" cairn.  

From next Monday Jordan are stopping all flights from Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Given that the UK is only a few days behind those countries with coronavirus, I now think it is very unlikely that my flight will be going two weeks on Friday☹️

Well there's always Wadi Brimham; it's a bit like a miniature, wet, cold version of Rum with beer available nearby as a bonus. 

are they actually grounding flights from the concerned hotspot destinations? Or will they require a certificate of clean health or something?

A friend flying from France has had her flight cancelled. A bit of googling seemed to confirm flights will be grounded.

I think you can still enter if you have a certificate.  Flights might be grounded for financial reasons 

Yes, I've seen that reported now. 

Jordan airport will be closed from the 17th of march 

Thanks for that info. It has been tricky getting definitive stuff. We've been getting info from the US embassy site. Anyway, we'd already resigned ourselves to cancelling. At least if the flights don't go we should  get the cost back.