An Amazing Challenge-Climbing Gabal Moosa (St. Catherine's)

This Eid, I travelled to Dahab with 3 of my closest friends and we decided to climb Gabal Moosa on the first day we arrived. We had heard that the view was amazing from the top and that it was going to be an incredibly tiring experience. Personally, I love to hike and love to be able to sit somewhere and look out to a beautiful view. It feels like you discovered a piece of heaven that you cant see every day; you have to hike, feel your muscles ache, and be out of breath to deserve such a nice view that is away from everyone else. That was my personal motivation to go so I was really psyched about going even though I knew we'd be dead tired the following day. So we go, get all warmed up, and start the climb at midnight. Its pitch black and you can hardly see a thing so that was the first challenge since you had sitting camels whom you'd mistaken for rocks, our camels walking next to you who you'd have to move out of the way for, plus the road itself was full of rocks and camel shit that you had to watch out for! But it made the trip all the more exciting and kinda scary! Quite a number of times we got to crack up laughing coz our friend Tarek would on a regular basis turn around to find himself face to face with a camel! hehe It was the funniest thing ever! He also had his video camera with him so he was filming the experience ala "Blair Witch Project" style which was fun to watch later on; cant wait to put a hand on a copy for myself! Its simply priceless! The more we climbed higher, the further away the peak of the mountain seemed to be...we finally got to the final rest stop which was following by some thousand of stairs to climb, and you'd assume that YAY! I made it to the last rest stop, we are almost there...but those last thousands of stairs were just the most challenging of all for me. I kept slipping, found it difficult to lift my leg up to the next step, and basically found it hard to coordinate my body coz it was just telling me ENOUGH! Thank God I had Hazem there with me who kept checking on me and looking out for me coz I kept getting so close to the edge of the trail and I wasn't even noticing! We get to the top after that, and wow at the crowd up there! There wasnt much room to watch the sunrise any longer! I found myself a spot to stand and just see the sky in between all these people and I was just wowed by the color of the sky and the clouds that even though I was so physically tired, I couldnt bring myself to sit down and miss the moment! I took as many pics as I could then Hazem and I went to look for the rest of our group whom we had lost on our way up the steps. Then we were feeling a sense of dread at having to go all the way back down again so soon! We waited as much as we could before taking that step but eventually we had to. What was nice was to see the scenery that was all around us that we didnt get to see on our way up in the dark, but by that point our legs were shaking and the whole trip down was sloping downhill so we were having a hard time enjoying the trip back despite the scenery. I passed out on the bus ride back to Dahab from there but was very proud of the fact that we did it! Not sure if I would do it again very soon though hehe!