To the Crater!

(This should have been published in April 2020 but things got in the way.)

So, I got up really early (3:30 a.m.) and headed out to see Al-Waba Crater. It's volcanic not an asteroid impact crater. If you are interested you can look it up online from various sites including Atlas Obscura. About half way there I caught the first glimpse of the sunrise. It's a four hour plus drive from my place to here. https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/do/adventure-activites/discover-the-al-wahbah-crater

Sunrise as I was heading into the hills.

There was the
obligatory traffic jam
for the camel drive.

Enjoying a cup of tea
with a young man who
was very interested in
meeting someone from
America.

I got there about 8:30 a.m. There was a little park and a (closed) museum near the parking lot. There are a number of kiosk/shelters around this half of the rim. I met a couple young men there with family and I was invited to a cup of tea. We mainly communicated using the translate app (very useful indeed even as rudimentary as it must be.) I was able to explain that I intended to hike down to the bottom of the crater. He seemed to think that you couldn't breathe down there (fumes from the volcano perhaps.) However the wind was very strong so I wasn't too worried.

He did head over the rim while I was changing into my shorts and sneakers. I started down in this area (wrong place to start but I didn't know any better) and he had completely disappeared. I didn't see where he went and thought that he had gone over the side - I hoped he hadn't fallen since it was a shear drop but I couldn't see over the side. So I drove over to where I was sure there was a trail. To my surprise when I headed down the Saudi was coming up the trail head, he had walked around the wide lower 'rim' and I entirely missed where he had headed off to.

So, starting out it was about 95°F with a good breeze and I had two 1.5 L bottles of water, I headed over the side, seemed like a fairly easy trail, someone put a lot of effort into it. Good/bad part is that the trail is from the north edge of the crater so while it is well lit it is probably hotter than if it were from the south rim. About 1/4 of the way down I ran into three young men (Indian most likely) heading back up. I had seen their car up at the top of the rim.

Three guys were headed
back up as I was starting
down.

In the background the 'salt' flat can be seen of sodium phosphate. There was a lot of water there since it had rained quite a bit recently out here. The hike is about 850' down (and back up of course.) You could see the steam rising off the salt lake as it got hotter. Fortunately there was a breeze all the way down but the sun was heating up - I should have gotten started earlier.

It's a steep climb down although the top part of the trail is deceptively easy going, after you round the first bend you get the view of the 'long' portion of the trail twisting back and forth.