At the foot of Jebel Hafeet there are ancient tombs that were built 5000 years ago. Did you know that? Neither did I! I poke around them. I poked around them but irrationally still a bit reticent to explore inside. After a proper survey of the site it was time to begin the day’s main event... Jebel Hafeet.

Jebel Hafeet is pretty well known. I had been there before and even stayed at the hotel there on top. But that day I was looking at it from a completely different angle. The angle from the base looking up a what I picked off google earth to be the valley that would lead to the easiest ascent.

I set directly up the wadi. Immediately there were big boulders and steep smooth rock waterfalls. 30m minutes in and feeling like I was getting nowhere scree slop appeared on my left to save me from the difficulty of the wadi. A steep scramble follow up to a ridge. When I think of pidgeons I think of trafalgar square however I now think of trafalgar square and Jebel Hafeet, because at the ridge I disturbed several flocks of pidgeons into the air. Pidgeons were to become a feature of the hike.

Now on the side of the valley/wadi I quickly discovered a series of small carns. These cairns continued along the side of the wadi about every 50m and were most helpful in showing a route as the side of the wadi was very steep and you never felt completely secure that would not slip and fall. Cairn, cairn, cairn, another cairn, somebody did go to an awful lot of trouble to place these cairns I thought to myself. I conclude that there were two possibilities either it was the good work of a UAE hiking group or it was the work of a smuggling group maybe people. The hiking group seem more plausible at that point.

All of a sudden the cairns were lost. But I continued reaching a point where I was trying to horizontally rock climb above a large drop into an extremely large pothole in the wadi. This did not seem like a good idea; disappointedly I turned around. Quite soon I noticed a steep but achieved slop further out of the wadi; no cairns though. I went for and end up on large shelf half way up from the wadi bottom and some cairns! I continued up over a tricky waterfall. Up and up, narrower and narrower until I was back to the wadi just above a large waterfall and below a sizable one. There was no way up. I ducked further into the water fall into a small cavernous space and found a way up. I was on the Jebel Hafeet highlands with peaks all around me. I have lost the cairns again. Near the top I could look down the car park at the top of Jebel Hafeet and round the back and up I was on the spine of Jebel Hafeet and the Cairns re-appeared.

I followed the cairns along the top for a while but I was going further and further into Oman. I had to get back down eventually so after a bit and a lot of close up birds of prey action I turned around.

So with the cairns every 50m going off a far as the eye could see into Oman, what do you reckon hikers or smugglers?