Lebanon – Qurnat as Sawda

Qurnat as Sawda (10,131ft) – Highest Mountain in Lebanon

Eric Gilbertson and Anthony

March 23, 2018

Snowmobilers, corniced ridges, huge alpine snowfields, ski resorts – these are not things that often come to mind when thinking of Lebanon, but they are all part of the experience of climbing Lebanon’s highest mountain in the winter or spring time.

I planned a 2-week country highpointing trip in the Mideast for spring break, with the goal to hit the highpoints of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. For political reasons, the order of operations makes a big difference for visiting these particular countries. Lebanon considers it a punishable offense to show up to the border with an Israeli stamp in your passport, so I definitely wanted to visit Lebanon *before* visiting Israel.

For related reasons, it’s not possible to fly directly from Lebanon to Israel. Other constraints on the order of operations are that Jordan requires advance application for multi-entry visas, and it’s extremely expensive to fly between Jordan and Israel. With all these constraints in mind, I determined the optimal itinerary would be to visit Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and then Israel, in that order.

Matthew could join me for the last three countries, but I still wanted a partner for Lebanon to split costs and make the hike more fun. After emailing the mitoc mountaineering list, I got connected with Anthony, who was studying in Beirut, and we agreed to meet up for the climb.

Shortly after grading my last final exam, I left Seattle on March 21. My first flight went over southern Greenland at night, and I was lucky enough to see the northern lights as a yellow/green ring in the sky. I eventually arrived in Beirut in the afternoon of March 22, and met Anthony and a taxi driver at the airport.

To get to the Lebanon highpoint, Qurnat as Sawda, I used skileb.com to arrange a taxi from the airport to The Cedars ski resort at the base of the mountain. I was a bit concerned about a US travel advisory discouraging travel to Lebanon, but I figured a taxi driver would know the safest way to get to the base of the mountain. Skileb.com also arranged a hotel to stay at. I usually don’t like staying in hotels, but for this trip I was trying to go light by not bringing a tent so I could avoid checked bags (that can get lost by the airline), so opted to stay in a few hotels.

Anthony and I got in the taxi and were soon speeding off through Beirut. The driving was pretty crazy, and in

retrospect I’m glad I didn’t rent a car there. We headed north along the coast of the Mediterranean, then turned east at Chekka and headed up into the mountains. We drove through cedar forests and eventually reached the base of tall snowy mountains near the town of Bsharri.

I had booked a night at St Bernard’s Hotel, but there aren’t many signs up near the ski resort, and many small roads criss cross the area, making navigation difficult. Eventually we stopped outside a hotel that seemed like the right one, and the taxi driver dropped us off. I don’t think he’d ever been up to that area before, because he wanted to get a picture with us in front of the snowy mountains.

Inside the hotel, the staff had no idea we were coming, and in fact there were no other guests there that night. The previous weekend had been the last day the ski resort was open, and the busy summer season had not yet started, so it was pretty deserted that Thursday evening. After making some calls to the owner they confirmed I had indeed already booked a room. After a dinner of hummus and pita bread we settled in for the night.

I had given myself two possible summit days for Qurnat as Sawda, because it was above treeline and occasionally gets big snowstorms. I had been checking the forecast on mountain-forecast.com for the summit for the past month, and one day it got 17 inches of snow!

Friday was forecast to be the warmest day of the past few months, and sunny, while Saturday was supposed to have low clouds and 60mph winds. We opted to summit Friday.

That morning we left the hotel at 8:30am and walked along the road for a mile to the base of the ski resort. The resort is at the head of a valley

with big snow slopes extending almost down to the trees. The ski slopes had snow up near the top, but were bare near the bottom. I could see why they weren’t opening any more for the season, especially with all the melting that would occur that day. This was disappointing, since I’d hoped to ski there with my extra time.

We walked up some muddy access roads to the base of the snow, and I found a broken ski pole that I used to hike with. The snow was slushy, so we skirted around it to the left, hiking up talus and scree slopes, until we were forced onto the snow. We put on our gaiters and postholed up to the top of the lifts, at the edge of a huge plateau at 9,000ft.

The snow was very deep here, and extended almost as far as we could see across the plateau. Fresh snowmobile tracks crisscrossed the rolling hills, and large cornices were hanging onto the edges of ridges. This was not the Lebanon view I had expected. I wished I’d brought my backcountry skis, because the terrain was perfect for endless miles of touring.

The weather was still sunny and not too cold, and I pulled up a GPS track I’d load on my phone. Following this route, I headed up to the right to gain a ridge crest at the east edge of the plateau. Along  the way we had to be careful not to get too close to the edge of ridges, because large cornices were overhanging on the north sides, a testament to the wind and snow this areas sees all winter.

Along the eastern ridge the snow melted away, probably blown off by the wind. We proceeded on bare ground for a

while over rolling hills until we crested a 3,065m peak and got our first good view of Qurnat as Sawda in the distance. It’s southern slopes were mostly bare, and this is in fact how it gets its name. Qurnat as Sawda translates roughly as black mountain, because its slopes are supposedly dark and snow-free all year, with the snow blown off by the constant wind.

Unfortunately there was a deep valley separating us from the summit, so we descended down slushy snow slopes, then picked up a compacted snowmobile trail to the base of the mountain. Here we left the snow, and hiked up scree slopes, eventually intersecting an ATV trail. The trail climbed steeply up to a ridgecrest, then weaved across another snow slope, until it ended at the summit.

True to its name, the summit was bare of snow, though extremely windy. A big monument on the summit had “Qurnat as Sawda, 3,088m” written on it, so we knew we were in the right place.

We took pictures and admired the view of snowy mountains all around. I imagined that if I lived in Lebanon, I would be making hiking and skiing trips up to this area most weekends of the year.

After getting cold in the strong wind we retraced our steps back down to the snowy valley. For the return, we noticed that we could actually continue following the valley all the way back to the ski resort, and didn’t need to go up and over the hilltops on the ridge route of our ascent.

We followed compacted snowmobile trails on the way back so we wouldn’t sink in too deep in the slushy snow. At

one point two snowmobilers caught up to us and offered us a ride, but we opted to keep hiking to enjoy the alpine scenery a bit longer.

A few hours later we reached the edge of the ski resort, and glissaded back down to the base. We made it back to the resort by 5pm, before dark and in time for another good dinner of pita bread, hummus, and meat.

Anthony took a taxi ride back to Beirut that evening, while I stayed around another day to enjoy the area. I took a taxi back to Beirut Sunday morning, and the driver was a character. There were no

seatbelts in the car, and he said “I’m a safe driver, so you don’t need a seatbelt.”

I’d heard this before from taxi drivers, but this guy was a bit different. Before we started he made the sign of the cross and said a short prayer. Then, before every blind turn he would make another sign of the cross. I would personally have preferred the safety of a seatbelt, but he indeed made it to Beirut with no incidents.

I soon boarded a flight to Cairo for my next highpoint of the trip Gebel Katherina, the highpoint of Egypt.

Video from the summit:

More pictures from the trip: