It was last Wednesday when my friend Rami called me to ask if I could guide them through Wadi Al Nakhr to cross this spectacular canyon starting from Jabal Shams and ending in Wadi Ghul.
It had been six years since the last time I took a group of five friends and thrill-seekers from Dubai on this extraordinary adventure.
This route was opened by my Masters, Patrick and Nathalie Cabiro, back in 2001. The descent involves 12 drops ranging from 25 to 80 metres high.
We agreed with Rami, Françoise and Hamoud to meet at the exit of Wadi Al Nakhr at 4 pm in order to drive up to Jabal Shams, spend the night in a guesthouse and start our fantastic journey early the next day. Before I reached the meeting point, Rami and Hamoud dropped one of the cars inside the wadi in the village of Al Nakhr to avoid walking 7 kilometres to exit the wadi.
We all drove up to Jabal Shams in Rami's car. As usual, Françoise was the logistics person who would drive the car down from the mountain the next day late afternoon to meet us when we finished our descent from Jabal Shams.
On our way to the mountain, we had a spectacular show of the sun setting between Jabal Al Kawr and Jabal Misht.
It was almost dark when we reached the house we had rented for the night.
After a delicious dinner brought by my companions, we packed our backpacks with all our climbing gear, snacks and water to be ready to start early in the morning.
We woke up at 4:45 the next day to have breakfast, aiming to hit the track at 6 am. I estimated our journey would take around 10 hours.
The starting point was only 1 kilometre away from the house.
Just before leaving, we checked the weather predictions, which were okay with no rain expected.
Françoise drove us to our starting point and we started moving at 6:35.
We agreed to meet her at the exit around 5 pm.
At this time of the day, the temperature was around 6 degrees Celsius! We started our descent on the Via Ferrata (metallic cable fixed in the rock to secure the climber) and did our first drop of 45 metres. At this time, the sun was already rising behind the mountain.
We reached the abandoned village of Sab Bani Khamis at 8 am and headed East, following the ridge of the left bank of the canyon towards our second drop.
Once I fixed my rope on the anchor, installed my descender, I started sliding down the 70m drop. Hamoud was second, followed by Rami. From this point, we had another 4 drops to finish abseiling a total of almost 140 metres of cliff.
On the way down to reach the canyon's bed, I kept a surprise for my two friends, which was the visit to 'Kahf Al Faras', the Mare's cave in Arabic. This cave can be seen from the balcony walk that leads to Sab Bani Khamis and looks like a very tiny entrance at the bottom of the cliff.
My friends were very impressed by the size of the cave. The height of the entrance is around 25m and the access is a very steep, slippery ground. Once inside, the roof is 45m high. I measured the size of the chamber with my laser device, which showed 75m x 55m.
After our short visit to Al Faras, we started scrambling down the scree until we reached the canyon's bed very close to the bottom of the Great Arch under the terraces of Sab Bani Khamis, a massive free drop measuring 385 metres that I first did in 2010 with my Romanian friend Mihai Catrinar and the second time in 2017 with Steve Backshall, a BBC TV star, along with Aldo Kane and my friend Justin Halls.
I named this drop Shaikh Al Majaneen (The shaikh of the crazies), a title given to me by my best Omani friend, Abou Hmeid, related to my passion for adventure.
The following part of the canyon was superb, involving many abseils, with the most beautiful being an 80m green waterfall ending in a crystal clear pool.
We reached the car left by my friends in Al Nakhr village at 5:30 pm and drove out from the canyon to meet Françoise. We stopped at Al Hamra and had a delicious dinner before hitting the road back to Muscat, which we reached around 10 pm.
Exhausted but extremely happy, I was already thinking about my next trip.
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