הגולן | Hiking the Golan

Last week, Oranim took us for a two-day hiking trip to the Golan. It was a lot of hiking, but it was a lot of fun.

First, just a bit of background on the area. The Golan Heights were captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, and defended in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. It is a strategic high ground that looks down on northern Israel. From the Israeli perspective, it is also a useful buffer zone between Syria and the freshwater Lake Kinneret (also known as the Sea of Galilee). For more details see the Wikipedia article.

On the first day, we had a five-hour hike through the valley of Nahal Jilabon. I had been to that valley on two previous occasions, but this time, we hiked the whole trail, so about half of it was new to me. We hiked down the southern side of the valley, past the Devorah Waterfall to a natural pool at the bottom of the Jilabon Waterfall, where there was time for a short rest, a snack, and swimming (not necessarily in that order). Then we hiked along the bottom of the valley on the northern side, back across the stream, and up the southern side to the western end of the valley. It ends in a plateau where there are great views of the Jordan River valley. We hiked across the plateau a bit, to a wooded hilly area. In the woods, there are ruins of a pool house built for officers of the Syrian military during the 1967 war. After the pool house, the trail continues through a very narrow passage lined on both sides with thorn bushes and barbed wire. The barbed wire is to keep people out of the minefields. Since Israel and Syria are still technically at war, and there has been no treaty signed, we don't know where any of the Syrian mines are located, so large areas of the Golan are completely off limits for safety reasons. As the tour guides love to say, "Every once in a while, a cow wanders into the minefields, and BOOM! kabobs!"

According to the itinerary we were emailed before the trip, we were supposed to hear about the battle for the Golan during the Yom Kippur War and something called the "Valley of Tears," but that didn't end up happening.

On Thursday night, we stayed at the Savyonei haGalil Hotel. It was really nice, recently renovated. That night, we had a party in the hotel courtyard with all the ISC groups (Ramla, Tel Aviv, and Ashdod). It was kind of funny because the tour guides and city coordinators were drinking with us, even though they're supposed to discourage us from doing so.

On Friday, we woke up semi-early to go on a water hike. We were supposed to visit a viewpoint of the border with Lebanon and hear about the 2006 war, as well as a former Syrian outpost to hear about the 1967 and 1973 wars, but neither of those things happened. But we did do the water hike. It was a walk, or rather a wade, through Nahal Hermon, which is one of the sources of the Jordan River. They told us it would be waist-deep, but it really went halfway up my chest. Some of the shorter people had to swim for small parts of it. And the water was cold! But it was still a lot of fun. We were supposed to leave to go home at 3:30, so we would get back in time for Shabbat, but for some reason we skipped some things on the schedule and left around 12:30. So we still got back with lots and lots of time before Shabbat started.

I've posted pictures here. (There are no photos from the second day because we were in deep water and I didn't want my camera to die.)