The climbing grades of two-thirds of the routes are mainly V+/VII+ by U.I.A.A. standards (many are harder). In the Yosemite Decimal System, this is from 5.10 to 5.13! You will find a sweet crack or an aid section, for sure! The rock is quite diverse. You can start climbing a finger crack, which becomes an off width, and finally turns into a roof of blocks with tiny cracks and sharp edges. The descriptions we had found of the routes are very old and sketchy, and were hard to follow. The grades of the hardest pitches, the quality of rock, and the quantity of the pitches didn’t coincide. And when you top-out, it could be the beginning of your journey, as finding the descent route is often difficult — in the dark it’s almost impossible — even by headlamp.

There are many places that could be bolted for multi-pitch routes, or multi-pitch sport routes. But the locals are not favourable to issuing bolting permits to anyone. So we climbed what we could and looked for projects. We travelled by camels through the desert and found an amazing “jebel” (mountain) with a couple of routes that begin with a huge off-width. The line was pretty hardcore (six or seven pitches, all near 5.12). We gave our new “baby” the name AAA — the first letter of each of our names.