Hiking the Jilaboun

Having just recently returned from Israel (as of 1:00AM EDT last Friday morning) I wanted to get my thoughts about the last hike I did while there – the Jilaboun River in the Golan. This was an amazing hike that I did with my younger daughter in the early afternoon last Wednesday. We drove from where we were staying near Rosh Pina up to the Golan and followed Waze until we got to the trailhead. When I read about the Jilaboun trail here I figured that we would be following the trail as they presented it – not quite. While that write-up notes that you park near the remains of a Syrian village (which we did) – we did not find the markings quite the way that article describes it and so we ended up getting on the trail near the Devorah waterfall. Ok – no biggie. As for the description that this trail is of medium difficulty – that’s accurate. It’s much rockier that I had anticipated and required a lot more scrambling than I expected. However, the trail is absolutely gorgeous and waterfalls are just incredible. As you can see from the pictures below the landscape is awesome. If you want a reasonable length hike that challenges you somewhat and rewards you greatly with beautiful views, the Jilaboun is definitely one to try. What I found somewhat amusing (albeit it’s not really *that* funny) is that the board at the entrance to the trail warns you (4th bullet down) to stay on the trail because of the danger of landmines. That’s not something you normally see when you’re hiking the Billy Goat Trail or Old Rag.

Vacation

We finally took a vacation — a real vacation. No Internet, no e-mail, no cell-phone. And we didn’t have to go very far. We went down to the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina to Lake Lure and rented a lake house for a week. It was a nice and quaint little place — 2 bedrooms, 2 bath. And we did a bunch of stuff around the Lake and in the area. We went and visted the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville one day (actually we did it on two days — the first day we went was a Monday and apparently they were closed that day. So we came back on Thursday). We went up to Chimney Rock and did the climb up the Chimney and then the Hickory Nut Gorge Trail leading to the bottom of Hickory Nut Falls. Unfortunately the Skyline trail and the Cliff trail were closed. Not sure why but I heard the next day while in Chimney Rock Village that it was due to someone falling from the Skyline trail. As I understand it a small child back in May slipped under the railing on the skyline trail and fell to his death. Very sad. Anyway I would be remiss if I didn’t include some pictures from the jaunt to Chimney Rock.

The Skyline Trail

From the Opera Box

To the Chimney

Hickory Nut Falls

Hickory Nut Falls

Pool at Hickory Nut Falls

Hickory Nut Falls

The Chimney

Other things that we did in Western North Carolina include going to the Linville Caverns, Gem Mountain, the original Mast General Store in Hendersonville, as well as the Mineral and Lapidary Museum in Hendersonville. Overall it was a great trip and we enjoyed it very much.

On the way back we took the Blue Ridge Parkway for part of the way north. We entered the parkway at Asheville (although we then had to take quite a detour in order to get around a part of the Parkway that was washed out) and then caught it again at mile 345. We followed it until we got to Linville Falls where we stopped for a while to go and see the top of the falls. They were awesome. I highly recommend that if you’re ever that way you should see the falls. Here are some pictures of the Linville Falls.

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On the whole, I really needed to get out of the city and away from the constant e-mail and cell-phone calls from work. It was wonderful to wake up to the cool weather on Lake Lure and to sit and have coffee knowing that I could not “get online” and check e-mail. Of course, the downside is that I am catching up on work now…but that’s a small price to pay.