The Red Canyon

On our way to Eilat we stop to hike the Red Canyon. After driving down a dirt road near the Egyptian border, we park at the trailhead. We hike down a dry creek for awhile before we reach red sandstone walls. We don't often see red sandstone here in Israel so we stop to take pictures. The first picture below is a portrait of me in front of the wall.




Miriam and Rebekah do some climbing on the wall.


Did you notice the peaks in the white layer just above Miriam in the picture just above? Here is a close up of them. What caused the white layer to form these peaks? I don't know. Perhaps the presence of some minerals that were more boyant than the layers immediately above. Maybe some kind of intrusion forced itself in.

Next the dry creek drops down into a much narrower red rock canyon. Note the large rocks protruding from the wall. I surmise that these were deposited when the area consisted of a sandy beach below rock cliffs from which these rocks tumbled down.

Here I am helping Rebekah down a ladder composed of metal rungs pounded into the rock walls.

Here the canyon walls are quite smooth, narrow, and high.

We come to an alcove and stop to take pictures.
This is the point at which we emerge from the slot canyon. Here the canyon is much wider. The walls are still red sandstone, but much rougher and heavily eroded. That's Miriam in the upper lefthand corner of the picture scouting out a hiking path.

Here the rock walls are eroded into interesting features.

I like the way the layers at this spot were deposited into alternating black and white bands.

We follow Miriam onto the ledge from which we can look back down into the slot canyon from which we have just come.
From here we hike back to the car. We are all in agreement that this canyon lived up to its reputation as being one of the best hikes in all of Israel.