A dive in fear! lessons learned from the field!

Olongway, Malawi

"Discovery is the privilege of a child: the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else" - Alexabder Grothendieck

Growing up we only learn to fear things, it will take you one time of touching the fire to recognize its pain, our memory of pain will never allow us to do it again! that;s not a choice, it is there in our subconscious mind!!! this is how we grow all of our fears in the life!

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.

Mount Washington

So my first weekend during the course have arrived, and all what I wanted is to make the most out of it!

So the decision was to take it to the extreme and knock the top of the highest mountain around! Mount Washington!

When ever I mention I am going to New Hampshire people start to tell me about Mount Washington and how crazy it's weather can be! The highest went speed and the most snow fall ever recorded were both on top of this mountain.

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.

Wilderness First Aid - Hike Safe!

In outdoors you should always be ready for the unexpected. In an extreme environment with many parameters out of control, accidents may happen. And then you will need to be prepared as a trip leader to provide the help and care for people who become ill or injured far from definitive medical care, and only using the limited resources Available.

The minute the guide accepts a participant to be in his group, he takes all the responsibility for bringing him back safe. In general, few simple acts of first Aid can make a difference between life and death, the lack of understanding these acts can put everyone in the outdoor group in danger.

Why You Should Hire an Adventure Athlete?

I was reading some reviews for the book “Business Lessons from the Edge”, which talks about how extreme athletes use intelligent risk-taking to succeed in business, when the idea of this article came to me.

Why would anyone hire a crazy risk-taker who risk even his own life?

In a previous post I discussed the reasons that make us take a high risk action –as a sport-.

Well what does it take to succeed in business? Risk taking. Preparation. Self-confidence. The same principles that drive extreme athletes to the highest peaks of performance.
.......More..

Age is never a limit

Few years ago, I been to some area near Al-Karak in an exploration trip -as I prefer to call it- to find a new canyon -was new for me and still not well known for mass hiking groups- with one of the local guides in the area. Early in the morning we prepared our gear, Ropes, helmets, etc... since the Canyon supposed to have 3 abseils

Before we head off, he told me we need to wait, his friend is going to join us, few minutes later an old man appeared, all grey hair, without any teeth in his mouth, he was 68 old then, it came to my mind is that the friend we are waiting for!! and the surprise was yes.

He had his own backpack and harness which he made himself. With all the walking, climbing up and going down he only needed two breaks, one for a cigarette and the other for making tea.

I wont talk about safety in the picture, we tried to convince him, but he wasn't interested in it. :)

Why we risk it? the reasons for taking high risk actions.

An interesting article on fox news under the name “New research shows what motivates people to do high-risk activities” was the motivation for me to write this post. The study that was conduct to investigate what pushes people to do Adventure Sports which involve a high risk factor, risking losing their own life. I quoted most of the article but added my comments to it. 

Photo By": Wolfgang Streicher - Canyonwolf (Saut d'Accomat, Guadeloupe)

The list of adventure sports is growing longer and longer, and the risk factor is even going higher. It is believed that all these adventure lovers and thrill-seekers are just sensation-seekers with the tendency to pursue sensory pleasure and excitement. It's the trait of people who go after novelty, complexity, and intense sensations, who love experience for its own sake, and who may take risks in the pursuit of such experience. Sensation seekers are "easily bored without high levels of stimulation," explains Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. "They love bright lights and hustle and bustle and like to take risks and seek thrills." 

This new study that was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, has found that risk takers are not all of the same ilk. Some participate in high-risk activities as a way of controlling their emotions and their lives.

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.

Mulanje Mountain (1)

Abdulla, Nadia, Osama S, and me –Cori- were still waiting to know where each of us will be spending the five months of our lodge placement which is a part of our year course we were doing in South Africa when the news came that me and Abdulla will be travelling to Malawi to do our placement in one of the lodges for wilderness company in there.

With the very little I knew about Malawi –indeed in my mind it was a group of islands in somewhere that I wasn’t sure where exactly- I started searching the internet for more information about this country and the surprise came when I found it was a landlocked country with no access to any sea or oceans which was the complete opposite of what was in my mind.

Republic of Malawi:

Or Nyasland as it was formerly known sets on the south east part of Africa and bordered by Zambia on the North west, Tanzania to the north east and Mozambique on the east, south and west.

Even though it is a landlocked country but one fifth of the total area of the country which is 118,484 Km² is covered with water.

Lake Malawi

Malawi is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by one of the largest lakes on earth, Lake Malawi or Lake Nyassa –the old name-.

Lake Malawi is considered the southernmost lake in the Grdeat Rift Valley system, the 3^rd largest lake in Africa, the eighth largest lake in the world, the 2^nd deepest lake in Africa and above all it has more fish species than any other lake on earth.

The Warm Hart of Africa

Maybe it is not only the wild life, nor the lake, neither the mountains of Malawi that made it to be the worm hart of Africa but the worm hearted people above all, their great hospitality and the warm smiles on their faces all the time.

Even with it’s being one of the world’s least developed and most-densely  populated countries (almost 15 million with 128 person/Km²) with more than 80% living in the rural areas with a low level of education and health care but people are still the greatest treasure of Malawi.

These was the information I found about the country but for me the most interesting piece of information I found was about Mount Mulanje, with its Peak Sapitwa the second highest peak in the African continent with an elevation of 3000 m with the mountain itself is globally considered as an Ecologically important area, not only that but with the many streams that descends from the mountain with the pools and the waterfalls all makes it sounds a great next adventure to be done.

I will Start my trip to there today and i will be adding more blogs telling you about the Mountain and the spiritual believes on the mountain which i found so interesting.