Early-morning hike to Mitzpe Y'rokham

This morning (Monday, 14 May 2012), I decided to drive up into the Eilat Mountains and then take a hike on the top of the world. First, I took the trail to Har Shlomo, which I had taken several weeks ago (and about which I posted here, with pictures). But this time, I continued further on the trail, descending a little on the east side of the mountain and continuing on a ridge towards the east. Here's a view of the trail. Near the bottom left corner, you can see the trail marker painted on a rock. The big, dark-colored mountain that dominates the picture I believe is called Har Shakhamon (Mt. Shakhamon, the same as the name of our neighborhood, which is on the opposite side of this mountain). To the right and below the mountain is the upper end of Nakhal Shlomo. In a previous post, I told about our drive down this nakhal (or wadi) to the sea, but that was in its lower part which is not visible from here. Two days ago, I parked the car at the point where the highway is about to go up out of this nakhal and hiked on the trail you can clearly see down in the valley in this view.

Here's another view of this morning's trail. This is the final stretch before reaching Mitze Y'rokham (the Y'rokham Viewpoint). As you can see, the trail passes along a rather narrow ridge at this point, with quite steep drops on both sides, definitely an acromaniac's delight (okay, I actually invented that word, but think of it as the opposite of someone who has acrophobia, the fear of heights). Yes, that's the sun in the upper left, trying to shine through the early-morning cloud cover.

Here's the view of Har Shakhamon and Nakhal Shlomo from Mitzpe Y'rokham: 

Here's the view looking northeast from Mitzpe Y'rokham. On the right, you can see just a bit of Aqaba, Jordan, and all across the background are the Mountains of Edom (in the modern-day Kingdom of Jordan, of course). At the bottom of the picture, you can see the signs telling us (in Hebrew and English) the names of some of the key features we can see from here.

The trail actually continues further, over towards Har Shakhamon. In fact, it may even continue to the summit. However, the first thing after Mitzpe Y'rokham is a nearly vertical descent. I was out of time for this hike, but even I hadn't been, this might have been a little too much even for THIS acromaniac! I actually took a couple of pictures of the descent, but neither of them gives ANY IDEA at ALL of how really steeply down it goes!