220808 - Mount Siani

220808 – Mount Siani

We rose and made the necessary preparations for the trip ahead. It was quite early and were provided with the standard packed breakfast. Scottish, Nick and Rachel had gone to watch the belly-dancing last night and got home at about 3AM.
The verdict had been “BellyDancing was pretty poor, the girls were very pretty though”. Whole families had been there, offering a very different view of the culture. All three of them felt it had been the first time that they had actually looked in on the culture, rather than watching from a tour-bus.

On the bus, we all tried to sleep. Emam provided some pointers about the history and current status of the area we were passing through. There were a great many check-points and I noticed a lot more Army and Police facilities (including a row of artillery about 2 kilometers back from the road). We stopped at the last service station before the Suze Canal for toilets and snacks, then passed beneath the water-way into Siani.

Over the next few hours, we saw the Canal at times. It eventually widened quite a bit. Often times the actual water was obsquered by the hieght of the sand. Seeing a Natural Gas tanker aparently “sailing through an ocean of sand” was quite... odd...

We arrived at our accomidation in Saint Katherine for a late lunch after checkin. We were all very tired and badly worn from the morning of travelling and minimal sleep. Everyone freshened up and ate, some people went for a walk or snoozed until it had cooled. We got onto a smaller bus and made our way to the Monistary about 430PM. Today we only walked past the outside of the fortifications, Emam promised us that tomorrow was the real tour.
This afternoon was dedicated to climbing Mount Siani.

There had been much discussing about this leg of the trip, everyone had no doubt that it would be the most athletic. Debbie had opted not to come, instead making use of the hotel facilities. Emmam and I both took camels, the rest of the group chose to walk.
Mount Siani is scaled by first taking a series of rocky and sandy pathways up about “2000 steps”, you are often doubling back at a higher level and there are multiple rest spots at distances just enough to be inconvient and then too frequent (the Bedouin seem to accumulate towards the top of the mountain). The majority of the canteens we passed were closed. As you pass from the Monastery up the first slope, there is a white chapel at the top of what appears to be an impossibly high and steep hill. While there is some significance for this building, I can't remember it and we don't pass nearby. The View over the monastery grounds starts to become reasonably impressive before disappearing behind the folds of the first mountain, the needle like trees standing watch between the fortifications and the nearby slopes. As we passed clockwise around the waist of the mountain now concealing the ancient building, the edge drops away quite steeply to the left. In the valley VERY far below and some kilometers away, we can see a number of local buildings and a large impressive structure that Emam tells me is a school.

Long before we lost sight of the Monastery, we had also lost sight of all but the last two members of our group. It appears that on mountain paths, human feet are faster than the “ship of the desert”. From the start, the camels had been complaining loudly and I'd had to swap from my particularly comfortable initial mount to a second and then a third that had a saddle with a great deal less padding. By half way, overlooking the school far below, I'd thought about just getting down and walking (the Benduoin guide had already had me dismount about 5 or 6 times to tighten the saddle), but Emam insisted that it would now be faster to just stay on our rides. By the end of this leg of the adventure, I would certainly be glad for not over exerting myself too early on.

Following the first “2000-2500 steps” (depending on who is telling the story), there is a pass through a crevace in the mountain that is preceeded by a steep climb. The pass saddles two mountains, we cross across this such that we exit with the mountain on our left and steep rockface dropping away to our right. Just before the pass there is a canteen, along with another one about 100M before where we said farwell to our disgruntled, humpy sources of transport. At the canteen directly before the pass, Emam took a seat and declared a rest with promises of following shortly “maybe”. From here I took another, final, brief look at the scenery that I'd been gazing across. The white chapel that had seemed so impossibly high was now atop its own little mountain, several kilometres away and at half our hieght.

Once through the pass and down a short track there is a small “village” of about half a dozen canteens. About 200M down the mountain side there was another monastery surounded by a wall with a handful of buildings, also flanked on the southern edge by tall needle like trees as sentinels. It was in the village that I now stood that marked the beginning of the 700 Steps. The steps were reputedly constructed by a solitary monk as a form of repentance, though I'm sure that they've seen a great deal of care and attention in more recent history considering how squared the first hundred were and the volume of concrete securing them.
The 700 steps vary from almost regularly shaped and distanced stairs to long stretching terraces of rock. Some are particularly high, others not so much, many of them treacherous. Though not the most comfortable of footware, my hiking boots would have saved me in ways that I will be very glad to never know. I'm not sure if the particular layout of the village is intended to mislead travellers, I later heard that the lead team of our group had actually gone down to the nearby monastery and had had to take a more difficult route up in order to avoid a complete double-back. I had actually walked the length of the little street and started looking for stairs before a local turned me around and got a boy to direct me. Looking back, there is very little doubt that there may be a ploy for tipping in this... none the less, I was back on the right track.
As the stairs stretched and doubled back, held steady and then jumped into a steep climb, I passed more than a few pilgrims on their way down. Encouragements of “only 10 more minutes”, “you are almost there” and the like offered as much revitalisation as the frequent rests atop particularly large rocks (which at times turned from “seat” into “next step”). There was no doubt, without the uncomfortable camel ride I would have never have made the ascent.
Finally, I made the last turn and the dash to the summit amid the cheers of the rest of the group. Sunset was about 10-15 minutes away. The view and the setting sun took away your breath as much as the altitude. At two and a half kilometres above sea level, that is no small statement.
There are two chapels at the summit of Mount Siani, the original chapel of Saint Katherine and the much larger and newer chapel. Both were locked. The older one is quite small from the outside, with a stairwell reaching underneath the building. The larger one is more along the lines of what you expect for a chapel. Out the front there was a fairly large, flat courtyard lined with a low wall to seperate it from the narrower stone terrace-platform below, in turn with its own low wall to keep back the immediate drop. The raised top of the wall was occupied by a handful of Bedouin and their opened suitcase stalls. On a tiny outcrop just below the original chapel, there was a particularly nasty out-house. All of the boys behaved as such, taking the opportunity to use the darkening mountainside as a latrine-to-remember.
Building these facilities would have been no mean feat, additionally I know very few priests in a fit state to perform Sunday mass atop this hand that reaches to the roof of the world. Looking across to Mount Saint Katherine, I can barely imagine the formal procession required to reach whatever stood at its summit. It is the highest point in Egypt and thankfully doesn't cheapen our current expidition by dwarfing us, it is simply “a little higher”. There is supposedly a chapel on top of that mountain too. Building any of these structures, let alone the stair in antiquity , is something beyond the imagination for such a remote region.

The glow of sunset left the mountain top with us, we had barely made it down a quarter of the steps before flashlights came out and the rate of decent decreased. Darkness had arrived as we walked into the lights of the little village, we passed on quietly through the mountainous crevace. By now the group had once again stretched out to those faster and more reckless at the front, us lame and crippled at the rear. Emam was waiting for us at the canteen where I had last seen her, having decided to remain well situated with snacks and drinks. Restocking on sugary snacks, chocolate and softdrink to try and invigorate tired legs, we tried to get the less functional torches in retreat party working. I ended out giving my backup light to John, who couldn't get the dead cells out of his torch. He and Emam motored off before we got to the next canteen, I hung back a little with Troy, Sarah and Aaron. We took turns in waiting for each other as we needed a rest. My knee held up admirably, but I was in no mood to stress it. Troy suffered on quietly the whole way down the mountain, his back would not have survived the camel ride up but the walk had punished him most cruely. By the next canteen, we had started to discuss just paying to stay there for the night.
By the time we had reached halfway, I was onto my second set of batteries and the torches Troy and Sarah had purchased that afternoon were almost dead. I passed my mini-mag onto Troy as he preferred to stay at the back (his back and ham-strings were torturing him by now) and I was doing quite well between pulsing his old light on and off, or sticking to the bright halo of Aarons torch.
We continued on with frequent breaks as time ticked by, starting to discuss if the others had already gotten the bus back to the hotel or if they were waiting for us. I was really starting to wish that I'd hung onto my spare light. As we passed beneath the white chapel that I'd seen on the way up, Sarah treated us by breaking into song. Opera singers in the mountains are ASTOUNDING. With needling by the others, I offered an off-key verse of “Hey Mister Tell-i-man, bring me a banana.. daylight come and me wanna go home..” cut short by coughing from the amount of dust I'd picked up on the trip.

We finally made the last turn around the apron-strings of the last mountain and the light of the monastery sprang into view. Still at the end of the valley, it was a bit of a walk away but at least home was in sight. This leg was particularly confusing as there were an abundance of lights at places all the way up and down each slope from the Bedouins and there were dozens of paths leading to the multiple climbs that visitors can do. A good half an hour later, we approached the end. The Bedouin guide who had left us behind met us about 300 metres out from the monestary, having seen our lights coming in. We were received with cheers by the rest of the group who had waited for us.

Walking on the gravel road down to the checkpoint at the enterance to the monestary valley, we exchanged stories and reclaimed loaned equipment. A short bus ride later, we were back at the hotel sitting in front of a buffet dinner that everyone was too tired, dehydrated or exhausted to make the most of. Forcing down several litres and a plate of food, I quietly retreated for a shower and as much sleep as I could get.