Al Amerat Hill

This Sunday we hiked Al Amerat Hill.  This was the highest climb I've done here in Oman at 1040 ft. of elevation gain.  It is also a windy and therefore chilly hike.  I'd recommend long sleeves and maybe even a wrap for your ears.

Panoramic view from the top.  Also note that I still rock my crazy leggings.  My vast collection has come in handy.

The girls have hiked this trail 3 times now, but this was my first time to get to join in on the fun.  It was first found via the Duncan Adventure blog.  To be honest, I was scared of this hike because I had heard about loose rocks and scrambling.  Not so bad going up, but that combination can cause me to panic while going down.

To get to the hike, you drive up Al Amerat hill.  This is a very visible road, especially at night as you see the lights zig zagging across the mountain side.  So you take the switchback up, then there is a turn off on your right that I imagine would be easy to miss.  Take that turn off, go between the concrete barricades, and drive until the road ends.  Literally.  If you walk to the end of the road, it is apparently a sheer drop off.  I didn't get that close.  There are some large painted boulders near the edge.  Just on the edge side of the boulders (a good 5 feet from the edge) was close enough for me.


For the hike, you turn away from the drop off and head up.  There is a barely there trail just to the right of the dirt road you took coming in.  Follow that up a ways.  It eventually turns into two deep tire paths.  When that ends, you just try to find the best route up to the top.  There isn't so much a path, but if you follow some of the goat droppings, then you're probably taking a pretty decent route. There are occasionally some rock cairns along the way to show paths that people have taken.

A cairn on the way up as we zig zagged up the mountain.

A cairn at the top of the mountain

At the top, we wandered along the ridge line up higher and higher peaks.  There were a couple of fenced off areas for solar panels and antennas.  More importantly, there are some great views of Muscat and Al Amerat.  Al Amerat is the village on the other side of the mountain.  The views were still spectacular even with a lot of cloud cover and dust in the air.  (There is a dust storm headed our way from Saudi Arabia... yay - not!)

Looking out over Muscat.  There is also in the center of the photo.

As you can see, it was a cloudy, dusty day, but the views were still great.

Obligatory selfie so I occasionally have pictures on my computer I'm actually in.  The wind would not stop blowing, so my stray hairs were going everywhere!

At the top, there were a few more rock cairns.  We follows these to head down a steeper yet more direct path to the cars.  Our route up zig zagged across the side of the mountain.  The route down was more a straight shot from the highest peak to where you can see your cars parked below.

Our cars are parked way off in the top left corner of the picture at the end of the dirt road.  This was our direct path down.

A shot of our group from below as we descended.

To be honest, the loose rocks weren't as worrisome as I thought they would be.  This mountain is made up of a more slate-type rocks, so the loose rocks are more wide and flat rather than small and round.  I do not like the small round rocks under my feet.  And most places on this mountain, I could find good, solid rocks to place my feet on.  And when in doubt, I could usually find a rock near by to lean into for extra support.  There were a couple of steep areas, so I wouldn't recommend this hike for kids.  But we did take a dog with us, and she had lots of fun!

Our mascot for the hike.  She had a lot of fun, and only had issues getting up one spot.