Haifa to Daliyat el-Carmel

Dried resin on burned pine

I walked into the park a little after dawn and just before a group of bikers, but even so nobody ran me over. The moon paled little by little. Something distant rustled and shook the bushes, moved towards me for a minute, then away. The trail continued straight down through scrub and oak forest until it turned right at the bottom of a dry riverbed (nahal in Hebrew). 

That should be Nahal Kelah, where I wanted to take a left and go up. There should be a trail up there. Maybe to the right of the riverbed. I tried it but found that it was impenetrable with no blazes. I checked my map again. Maybe to the left. Same thing. Checked the map again. I considered going straight up the riverbed, but it was impenetrable with no blazes. I turned right, frustrated - if I didn't find Nahal Kelah I would end up hiking the ancient paths to suburbia. After half a kilometer or so there was a perfectly well-marked trail - Nahal Kelah - heading the right way. 

Hawk perched above Nahal Kelah

The blue-marked trail followed a small steep riverbed, sometimes above, sometimes actually in it, sometimes both (the trail forked). Open, dark forest shadowed the smooth rocks in the nahal. Railings and bars led up steep rock to the cliffside, where sunlight reflected off the pale rock. It was about eight in the morning but hot and bright. Something invisible from above moved in the forest. There was no trace of anyone else other than the footstep-eroded slopes, the frequent blazes painted on rocks, and the trash. 

I turned right at a bridge. More precisely, I stopped where a bridge blocked the riverbed, climbed up the canyon, and reached a red-blazed trail winding round the cliff. Things scrambled down the scrubby rocks. Furry things. A rock hyrax froze a few feet below the trail. It stared up at me. I stared down at it. I changed lenses very slowly. The hyrax saw no need to get out a camera of its own and stayed frozen. Another hyrax perched above the trail and stared down at me. I stared up at it...

The rock hyrax below the trail

The pattern didn't continue very long; there were only two hyraxes (actually, there were probably many more, but they were better hidden), and only so long I could stick around. The trail coiled up the Kelah canyon for a little while before turning left and leaving the cliff face. There was still no shade. 

I crossed a road, took the trail towards Makhtzevot Qedumim (an ancient quarry, thus the name), taking a shortcut towards a parking area and a memorial to fire victims. A few years ago a fire destroyed much of the Carmel; blackened branches and recovering scrub cover most of the area from the memorial to Daliyat el-Carmel. 

Burned stump on the open mountain

From Makhtzevot Qedumim the trail to Daliyat el-Carmel (actually, there is no one trail) is east and downhill. On the hill butterflies fly through oaks, and lizards run up the rocks. Below is open, with tall pines but little else. After a little way I found an intersection and took a blue-marked trail uphill towards Mt. Arqan. The heat of the day had arrived and the mountain was burned and open. Things grazed in the scrub. Bovine things. A cow looked up at me, froze, and stared. Cows are a little more intimidating than rock hyraxes. I turned away and stepped back a few paces, which satisfied it, then walked forward again. The cow froze and stared at me again. Repeat for five minutes... 

White dust, bright and deep, covered the path up the open mountain. The view was clear to the Mediterranean, but by the end of the trail I was almost too tired to care. Trees reappeared, and the blue path ended at a confusing intersection. The left path became a dirt road leading through orchards and empty new neighborhoods to Daliyat el-Carmel. Actually, to just south of Daliyat el-Carmel. Following the sun doesn't work very well at high noon. The trail system was complex enough that I was lucky to get there at all.

Intro and Nahal Nesher

View to the east on the Nahal Nesher loop, about 3/4 of the way through

This is my first post and I'm as familiar with the format as anyone is after five minutes, so forgive whatever it is that I'm messing up right now. To start out with, I'm an American living in Haifa, Israel, for the year; I'm a student, insofar as I've graduated high school and haven't started college yet; I call myself a photographer; and if you're reading this, you probably know all that anyway. For now, I hike. My family's apartment is just north of the Carmel forest, which is the largest park in Israel, and I explore the trails. My writing here, with luck, is somewhere between nature writing and trail guide.

The Nahal Nesher loop starts just below the University buildings on the Isfiya road. The right fork of a paved road leads to a gravel path leads to a windswept pine on an east-facing cliff. I knew this because I'd watched the sunrise there the day before. At home I set an alarm, woke up at dawn, and walked up the humid hill towards the windswept pine. On my way in I passed a small group camping illegally and sleeping peacefully. At the pine, I watched the sky and waited. I found a place just above the oak forest to set up a tripod. The sun rose after a quick small brightening in the clouds, already more white than yellow or red. Within a minute or two warm light shone on the pine needles and rocks. I found the trail entrance further on the paved road, just below a picnic area. A large trilingual sign told me that at least one person in my group had better have a 1:50,000 trail map. Oops. The blue-blazed trail headed more-or-less-
gently downhill, with a few left turns and pine branches scattered on the rock path, through what could be described as open forest, but only on average. Mostly either scrubland or claustrophobic. After maybe a kilometer (though I have no real idea) the forest cleared and I found myself walking on the edge of a cliff.

Not a particularly scary cliff, though. If I fell off, I would land on some very unfriendly bushes and rocks, but they were only about five feet down. Sunburn was a bigger risk. It was a very open cliff, though, and I had a wonderful view of the region's numerous and large skyscrapers. And construction sites. But once you're a thousand or so feet above them they look...OK. They'll never look charming. They look marginally less blightlike. There was also a view of the countryside and, to the east, a gorge between mountain ridges, hundreds of feet deep with hazy limestone shelves. It might have been carved two million years ago by a river, two thousand years ago by local stone cutters, or twenty years ago by ditto. 

The path tended roughly west across the cliff, keeping level but curving among the hills for a kilometer or two. The view was hazy but on the rocks next to me the light never paled. Finally the trail abruptly turned left and curved up almost vertically through tall shady pines and gnarled katlav trees, red-barked and peeling. After a few hundred scrambling meters I climbed back up to the windswept pine. I had never seen it in full daylight and barely recognized it.