How do we get to Sinai? I wondered. How will we find the mountains and the routes to climb?

It was a snowless winter in 2006 and all of the previous summer and autumn we, as all climbers do, trained hard and surfed the internet with the aim of learning about new lines and high peaks. Before the new year, I was surfing the Web, and found a site describing about 200 routes among the granite citadels, some 600 to 800 meters tall, in a place named St. Catherine.

St. Catherine is 225 km from Sharm El Sheikh and about 120 km from the seaside. The nearest towns are Dahab, the city of “freedom,” and Nuweiba, known as the city of “silence.” I found that most of the routes were established from 1977 to the late 80’s. British climbers had set up the last of the known routes, making about a dozen climbing expeditions to Sinai determined to find new lines.

They opened a new bouldering area called “Aragon” near Dahab, as well as set up about 25-35 sport routes near Dahab. Nowadays, they are working on a very detailed guidebook about the climbing at Sinai Half Island, which will include the sport routes, bouldering opportunities and new trad lines.

Let’s get back to the “X” territory. Before our online searches, we had no idea about the relief, lines, structure or categories of the mountains. The pictures on the web site showed only the old black-and-white photographs of the finger cracks and off-width sections that went in different directions. The most impressive were the citadels of solid granite and the vertical and off-vertical slopes. So, we packed our gear, grabbed the pigs and moved on.