Har Tzfahot near Eilat: This is a beautiful place to hike in winter though one of us was once crazy enough to do it in the midsummer 45C heat.
There are several different routes you can hike from Har Tzfahot. The shortest of these is more or less circular and easily accessible by bus. But if you choose one of the longer routes you can enjoy more of Eilat's incredible, multi-colored mountains.
Nahal Tzofit in the Arava looking towards the Dead Sea and Jordan: If you really enjoy long desert hikes and you start early, you can do the entire Nahal Tzofit trail in one day (though I wouldn't try to do the whole thing during the hotter months). Israelis like to stop every 15 minutes or so for a rest and a meal so people here don't usually tackle more than half the trail at once.
When you're doing the Upper Nahal Tzofit in winter, leave time for a dip in the pools of fresh icy water. Lower Nahal Tzofit offers ropes and a choice of walking high up along the side of the canyon or walking between the narrow canyon walls. It's beautiful any way you do it.
Nahal David at Ein Gedi: This is one of the waterfalls on the Nahal David trail in Ein Gedi Nature Reserve. There are lots of trails in the reserve of different lengths and levels of difficulty. The reserve has ruins, waterfalls, springs, freshwater pools you can swim in, mountains you can hike to the top of and the hyrax and gazelles are easy to spot since they've mostly lost their fear of people.
Nahal Arugot at Ein Gedi: Another good trail in the Ein Gedi reserve, Nahal Arugot features a couple of waterfalls and a beautiful pool. The picture was taken under the first waterfall you come to on the way up Nahal Arugot from the Dead Sea. Further up the nahal are the taller Hidden Falls. The hike all the way up to the Hidden Falls with lots of time for lounging in pools only takes a few hours. At the right time of year, you can continue on to the pool further up the nahal. More pictures of Richard and Virginia at Nahal Arugot.
Tal getting very wet in Nahal Dargot: If you are really tall, really fit, own a 15m rope, and like soaking yourself in water no matter what the level of green slime, then this is the hike for you. This is the only hike in the country I couldn't have done on my own (not having the reach to stretch between some of the handholds in the cliff sides).
The trail starts near Metzuke Dargot and ends by the Dead Sea north of Mitzpe Shalem. Nahal Dargot is an 8 to 10 hour hike. Even if you are a fast hiker, you can easily get stuck behind a slow group on this trail so start the hike early in the morning.
The trail is through a narrow canyon with slides and pools around nearly every corner (or as some say: with a life-threatening situation around every corner). If you do this hike, you'll get wet and your stuff will get wet (making it a good hike for a hot day). There's no way to avoid the water so be prepared. And as with all hikes in narrow canyons, make sure there's no rain expected upstream if you want to get out alive. And don't go without a rope. You will definitly need it and you'll need it more than once.
Nahal Tze'elim near the Dead Sea: This is a very long hike. It took us about 10 hours and a lot of water bottles to do the shorter loop. The longer loop requires an overnight stay at the halfway point. The trail starts at the end of a 4 km dirt road off the main road between Ein Gedi and Masada. We camped out at the trail head to get an early start.
There are ways you can combine Nahal Tze'elim with other trails going towards Masada. Whichever way you do it, it's long. Like all the long hot desert trails, this one would be nicest after a rain when you can swim in pools of cold fresh water. We hiked it in early spring by which time the pools were already covered with a thick green slime and we had to wait to the end of the day to refresh ourselves with a dip in the nearby Dead Sea.
Climbing Har Zin: Har Zin is in a rather out-of-the-way part of the desert where no buses run and the roads aren't in very good shape. If you have a car that can handle the road, it's a short hike up an unmarked but well-trodden trail to the top of the mountain. The trail down is done mainly by sliding though Michal likes to bouce down in the soft sand all the way to the bottom. Not far from the end of the trail is "Sde HaBulbosim" a field of round rocks that look like giant potatoes. Also nearby is En Zin. For more information on these trails, contact the Hatzeva field school.
Ibex at En Avdat near Sde Boker: This is a short hike starting just south of Sde Boker. The north end of the trail starts after a windey road near Midreshet Ben Gurion. It's not a long walk down if you have to walk it. The south end of the trail has ladders going up the side of the canyon to the road. The trail is short enough that you can leave a vehicle at one end and easily walk to the other end and back (unless you get stuck behind a group of 200 school kids at the ladders). Near the south end is a large pool under a waterfall. It's a nice place to swim early in the season before the water gets too scummy.
Ibex near En Akev: A 5 hour loop trail, this hike starts from the bottom of the windey road described in the En Avdat trail above. The area is loaded with ibex. This is mostly a dry desert walk until you come to the Akev spring. There you'll find a beautiful pool of clear water under a small fall. It's a nice place to swim. I was there in early fall before the first rains and yet the water wasn't at all scummy-looking.
If you want yet another nice trail in this area, there's Nahal Haverim, traditionally hiked by moonlight on full moon nights. This hike can take a couple hours if you're stumbling around in the dark. One end of the trail is at the bottom of the same windey road that the En Avdat and En Akev trails start at. The other end is the first turn off on the left coming south from Midreshet Ben Gurion on the main road. The trail has a couple incredibly windey, narrow canyons branching off it and the whitish rock in the area lights up well under the full moon light.
A mosaic floor in the ruins on top of Masada: Between us, we've been up Masada several times. Guy was once even lazy enough to take the cable car. I'm more fascinated with Yigal Yadin's story of the archaeological excavations than with the site itself.
I've only been up Masada once. I took the Snake trail in the early hours of the morning hoping to see the sunrise from the top. It wasn't a very exciting sunrise. More exciting were the early morning gazelles bouncing over the walls and down the cliffsides.
The hike up Masada isn't particularly hard unless you're out of shape or you do it in the heat of a hot summer day. There's an admission fee as the site is in a national park. But there are several trails around the base of the mountain that you can hike for free. There's a youth hostel near the park entrance and a picnic area in front of the hostel with water and toilets where you can camp for free if you're hiking up early in the morning. There are also lockers outside the hostel where you can leave your bags for a few shekels.
Nahal Tamarim in the Judean Desert looking towards the Dead Sea and Jordan: This one isn't really on the maps and isn't really a hike. Well, the access trail to the canyon is on the maps and is a nice hike up into the Judean mountains but the route through the canyon is unmarked and can't be hiked. In fact this picture was taken from the top of a 70m cliff which we had to rappel down. After that there was a 40m cliff to rappel down and after that, well you could tackle another 2 or 3 cliffs or you could cut across the side of the mountain to get back to the trail you came in on. Since we were a group of Israelis who had to stop and boil up a pot of tea after each cliff, we didn't have time to descend more than the first 2 cliffs. So we're still waiting for a chance to do the whole thing from start to finish.
Amram's Pillars near Eilat: This is a very short trail (about a 2 minute hike) at the end of a long dirt road. We made it into a long trail by walking most of the way down the road since Guy's motorcycle isn't very stable on that kind of surface. There are a variety of other trails in the area that you can combine in different ways if you're looking for something of a more challenging length. I can recommend Nahal Amir and Nahal Shehoret and hope to soon check out Ma'ale Amram.
Trying not to fall into the pools in Nahal Mishmar: Nahal Mishmar is another wadi in the Dead Sea area. It's a couple hours walk to the pool at the end of the canyon along a trail that stays high. We went in on the trail and tried to come out along the bottom of the canyon. You eventually get to an impassible dry waterfall (though I'm sure it's passable if you bring long enough ropes). There is supposed to be a way to climb up out of the south side of the canyon at this point but we never found it and looking was pretty dangerous. So we gave up and climbed up the north side instead rejoining the trail we'd come in on and following it back to our starting point.
Nahal Uzgad (pictured) and Nahal Ashalim: Nahal Uzgad has no trail markings but then again, it's hard to get lost following a nahal. The nahal is near the Dead Sea by Sdom, off the dirt road leading to the Flour Cave. It starts just past a sign warning of land mines!
We combined Nahal Uzgad and the lower part of Nahal Ashalim together into one long tiring hike. The tiring part came from having to hike 3km on boring dirt roads to get in to Nahal Uzgad and another 3km or so back to the vehicle after finishing Nahal Ashalim. Of course if you have a pair of jeeps or someone to drop you off and pick you up again later, you can avoid this problem. The combination of Uzgad and Ashalim took us 8 hours and we practically ran the whole way. Leave yourself lots of time if you're doing this hike and want to do it leisurely.
When you reach the end of Nahal Uzgad, you join up with a trail marked in red that leads to the blue-marked Nahal Ashalim trail. We somehow wound up loosing the red trail and ended up descending to Nahal Ashalim on a scenic green trail. This little detour probably added an hour or two to our hike and I wouldn't recommend it on a sunny day because the area between Uzgad and Ashalim is very exposed.
To do all of Nahal Ashalim takes 2 days so it's not a very popular hike. As a result it's one of the few trails that's almost completely garbage-free. It's a really stunning location with a narrow canyon and a hugh ascent and descent at one point to avoid a waterfall. If you go, bring a rope. Ours sure came in handy.
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