For many years, I had been planning to explore the upper part of Wadi Shab, which is unknown to tourists who visit the section close to the Sea of Oman.
I decided to go with three canyoning partners namely Nadhira, Rami, Marco, and Hamoud.
We drove to the village of Al Ghomb in the mountains and started by hiking on a trail I had done around 15 years ago, eventually reaching the bed of Wadi Shab through one of its tributaries.
We all met in Al Amerat at 7 am and drove with two cars. First, we reached the village of Al Jahl, where we left one of the cars and continued in the second car to Al Ghomb.
The village had changed a lot since I last saw it around 16 years ago, with many new houses built. We began walking on the trail on the right side of the canyon, enjoying the
breathtaking views of the lush green gardens of Al Jahl that we could see from faraway in the wadi bed.
It took us around 1.5 hours to reach the tributary I had spotted on satellite pictures of Google Earth.
There, Rami and I climbed down the tributary of Wadi Shab and placed our first anchor at the edge of the cliff to abseil down to the wadi bed.
Once we fixed the anchors, I called Nahira, Marco, and Hamoud to join us.
I was the first to abseil, followed by Rami and the others.
After measuring the second drop with my laser tool, that showed 35 metres.
We fixed a second anchor to reach the wadi bed, which
was full of water from the recent rain, creating crystal clear ponds.
After exploring the wadi for a couple of hours, we found a shaded area near a massive boulder where we had a snack before starting our descent back to Al Jahl.
As we progressed in the wadi bed, we reached the most beautiful spot: the waterfall I had heard about but couldn't reach during my last visit to Al Jahl.
The waterfall was a small piece of heaven on earth, with springs gushing out from the mountain, forming a mesmerizing 35-metre pouring in waterfall into a large pool of crystal-clear water. We found there old anchors fixed by others, so we had to fix new ones before abseiling down the waterfall.
After everyone completed the drop, we continued downstream in the wadi bed, full of running water and small waterfalls. We reached the small drop that had stopped me from going upstream during my previous visit to Jahl. From there, we progressed for another hour to reach our vehicle that we had left in the morning.
Hamoud and Rami drove to retrieve our second car parked in Al Ghomb. Despite feeling exhausted, we were extremely happy to have such a great time in nature. We left Al Jahl at 5 pm and reached Al Amerat at 7:30 pm.
The thing that struck me the most during this trip was this Lathab tree (Ficus salcifolia) growing upside down from the roof of a shallow cave we spotted high in the cliff.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
