The Jordan Trail Ownership ملكية درب الاردن

In Jordan as communities recognize the social, economic, environmental, and health benefits of hiking, trails development is becoming more prevalent.

ان زيادة الوعي لدى المجتمع بالاهمية الاجتماعية و الاقتصادية والبيئية و الفوائد على الصحة العامة للمسيرة في المسارات و الدروب البرية أدى الى زيادة العمل على تطوير المسارات و دروب المسير و المغامرة في الاردن.

The involvement of the local communities must be considered in the early stages of the trail development. Instead of adopting a top down approach where agencies plan and implement the development of trails with limited input from the public (which is the traditional way of trail development), an early involvement of the local communities should be considered to best serves the community and trail planners, as the combination of local knowledge and planning expertise creates a dynamic and interactive planning process.

Leave No Trace لا تترك اثر!

“The notion that [outdoor] recreation has no environmental impacts is no longer tenable.”—Curtis H. Flather and H. Ken Cordell,Wildlife and Recreationists

Great tit tired of seeing our acts :)

People enjoy the outdoors in myriad ways. We explore on foot, 4X4, and mountain bicycles. There are more of us pushing our sports to greater extremes and into more remote parts of the natural world every day. Our experiences are personally satisfying, but they can be costly to the places we visit and the animals we observe. (LNT Desert and Canyon booklet)

يستمتع الناس بالمناطق البرية بالعديد من الطرق، فنحن نستكشف هذه المناطق سيرا على الاقدام، 4X4، او بالدراجات الجبلية. المزيد منا يقومون بتخطي الحدود و الوصول لمناطق لطالما كانت بعيدة المنال. تجربتنا في هذه المناطق عادة ما تتركنا مستمتعين و راضين عن إنجازاتها، ولكن ماذا عن اثر هذه التجربة على ألاماكن التي نزورها؟ و الحياة البرية التي نراها.

Hike like a Martian

The Martian Film, Jordan, Wadi Rum.

In the outdoors I have been falling between two schools. Adventure and challenge school, where we hike, walk, run, or ride from A to B with the fastest time possible, a physical challenge for ourselves, body and mind, a way to cross the barriers in our minds that keep telling us we can’t, because this is how it has been programmed to protect us, and this is what it does all the time.

We tend to challenge our physical abilities. Go out to do a sport and have a healthier life style. The natural terrain makes it even more challenging. There in the nature we feel how we are small part of a bigger planet, an infinite universe. We keep searching for new heights, pushing toward new limits to prove the capability of the amazing human machine! (Just to mention Ueli Steck’s with his fascinating 82, 4000m Summit in 80 days project). We Human are setting new limits of speed and challenge for the outdoors. (READ MORE

The Jordan Trail (Hidan, Mujeb, Kerak, Wadi Rum, Red Sea)

Rum to Aqaba, Aqaba Mountains.

During the last couple of weeks The Jordan Trail team was out on the trail, Mapping, Photographing and keeping notes about the trail, we have done two amazing parts. The first was from Wadi Hidan all the way to Kerak City, crossing Wadi Mujeb which took us 4 days camping out, one night near Shqaiq Area and the other 2 nights down in Wadi Mujeb.

Jordan Trail (Homrat Ma'en to Waleh)

Down Wadi Waleh - Hidan

During the last days we have done scouting 3 more sections of The Jordan Trail, (Zarqa Ma’en p to Makawer, Makawer down to Hedan), and parts of the third section that goes down from Humrat Ma’en to Zarqa Ma’en, all 3 parts are amazing hikes, where you get up and down through many different topographic

The Jordan Trail (Homrat Ma'en)

Monday (13, Oct), I joined the team mapping the Jordan trail in the first hike, the team was: Tony & Di Tailor, Mark Khano, Amjad Shahrour, they have already done mapping  a good part of the trail, Most of the northern regions up to now, I will be joining the team during the coming month mapping, walking and taking the GPS and walking notes for more than 200 km mostly to the south of Jordan, yesterday we hiked around 7.5 km in Humrat Maen Aria crossing from before wadi Hemara and reaching to Wadi Zarqa Maen, a pleasant hike, contained some up and downhill, the start point was full of Acacia trees, along the way we saw different birds, crested larks, Tristram starlings, what I believe a Hoopoe lark, some hyena tracks and territorial marking, different types of butterflies, and some interesting flora, but the most intresting thing in the hike was the amazing views toward the Dead Sea area.

11 DAYS, 11 MARATHONS TO GIVE HOPE TO CHILDREN IN JORDAN

Amman—After his run around the world, David Christof will cross the Kingdom of Jordan in eleven marathons from the 15th to the 25th of March. David hopes to raise money for Jordanian and Syrian children’s educational needs such as school improvements, supplies and equipment.

Over a third of all Syrian refugees who have found refuge in the Kingdom are children and Jordan is struggling to meet the needs for teachers, materials and space to provide them with an education. Informal schools run from garages and other ad-hoc locations attempt to provide education to the children who cannot enroll in the Kingdom’s over-crowded schools.

The First Specialized Training in Nature Guiding

A photo of the participants in the Nature Guides Training course

The RSCN held the first specialized training for their Nature Guides last Sunday (5-1-2014) as part of the building capacity for their employees in order to provide the guests with the best experience possible.

The training was delivered by Four FGASA (Filed Guide Association of South Africa) Guides (Osama Cori, Osama Al-Smadi, Abdulla Abo-Rumman, and Nadia Al-Aloul) who have spent a year studying Nature Guiding In Eco-Training Academy, South Africa.

This Course was a first of its kind in the region, covering an introduction to the intended skills needed for a guide to build the best experience for his guests, and covering the basic knowledge that the guide need to possess to be able to interpret the environment to his guests. The training where build through over 6 months during which the four guides were working on developing a training curricula similar to the South African one but well fitted to the needs of the region.

Can't it be prevented? -Canyons of Jordan-

It took me too long to publish this post even it was ready since 16/5. but the main reason behind it was that the responses I got on the previous "Can't it be prevented?" posts were mainly from people from outside Jordan, I do appreciate all the responses since it is for the benefit of all, but I was hopping for more local involvement from the local canioneers of Jordan, it is bitty though but I will keep posting for the benefit of all.

In the previous two posts of the series (Cant it be prevented?) we had an introduction to canyoneering and its hazards in the first post, and then we discussed the need of a code of conduct that set a base of understanding for the minimum level of accepted standards for both canyoneering operators and their guests.

Can't it be prevented? -Why we need a code of conduct-

In the last post "Can't it be prevented? -Introduction to canyoning and its hazards-", I talked about some of the accidents happened in the last 2 years in Jordan canyons as an example of these accidents happening all around!

Wadi AlWaleh- Hidan

Maybe most of these accidents I mentioned occurred with individual Travelers who are not supervised or not joining groups, but some happened with people who promote themselves as professional guides!

I agree with a comment I received on that post, accidents is the word used to excuse the lack of professionalism, a professional is one trained to leave no chance for accidents.

Even with the extreme nature of the canyon, a professional should be able to read the signs of the nature and be proactive to it, but in the same case he should be able to deal with any case to minimize its impact.

In our case in Jordan, the biggest problem occurs due to random access to hazards area by none trained and none professional people.

Many calls were made to have a control on accessing these places by sort of land owners or so. But without the existence of a set of standards there won't be a way to differentiate between the good and the bad.

Can't it be prevented? -Introduction to canyoning and its hazards-

Photo by: Jennifer Eaton Gokmen 

Canyoning is the mother of all recreational sports, because in many cases you will end up using a variety of other recreational sports, hiking, trekking, scrambling, climbing, technical swimming and even diving, and the most important part is the technical rope use.

A lot of technicality needed to provide a special, but safe experience.

The rush of adrenaline, a mix of thrill and pushing ourselves to the limit, even reaching to new limits we never knew that we were able to reach is what makes the canyoning experience a great Adventure, and with the addiction to the adrenaline rush, the need will be always for a bigger dose, though every time a canyoneer will look for a bigger challenge in which -same as all other recreational sports- he will challenge himself before challenging anything else.

The Art of Tracking - Make The Nature an Open Book-

fresh Spotted Hyena Spoor -South Africa, Wet Land

I always was interested in the art of tracking, lately I was reading an interesting book called " The Art of Tracking, The Origin of Science" by Louis Liebenberg, a free book that you can download from the library section in the Resources & Forum section in the website - www.explorejordan.c.la - . The book discus the evolution of the hunting methods and the use of Tracking and who it was the way we could develop our thinking toward the modern since.

But I want to share with you here some citation from the introduction of this interesting book.