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EXPLORATION |
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Written and photographed by John and Susy Pint
Jebel Qidr In stark contrast, only two kilometres to the north, stands a third volcano, 2022 metres high. As graceful and symmetrical as Mount Fuji, Jebel Qidr consists of hard basalt as black as licorice. Its last (and fairly recent) eruption spewed out a tar-colored flow that partially engulfs the two creamy-white volcanoes, earning Qidr the nickname 'The Black Widow,' as she seems to have been caught in the act of ensnaring her neighbours. The line of demarcation is so abrupt, you can actually stand with one foot on Qidr's brittle, black basalt and the other in Bayda's powdery white comendite. Few people have ventured into the lonely reaches of Harrat Khaybar to see these volcanoes, but those who have done so agree that they deserve a place high up on the list of the world's most spectacular natural wonders.
Black and White Volcanoes We first heard of this unique place from our friend Patrick Pierard, a French explorer who knows western Saudi Arabia like the back of his hand. Every time Patrick mentioned the black and white volcanoes, he would wax poetic: 'Ah, the majestic landscape! The sunlight bathing the black and white lavas - incroyable!'
Dhahran's Travelling Naturalists After listening to numerous descriptions, we were determined to visit this unique site and we were overjoyed when we were able to join members of Dhahran's Travelling Naturalists in an expedition to the heart of Harrat Khaybar. We decided to meet at the ancient dam of Sed Kasaybah, which lies just off the highway leading from Medina to the famous tombs of Madain Saleh. After that, we would caravan for a hundred kilometres or so across the 'tyre-eating' lava of Harrat Khaybar.
Kasaybah Dam We arrived at Kasaybah Dam late in the afternoon, when the waning sun was painting its walls a golden hue. This is a big dam, 20 metres high and about 135 metres long, said to be well over 1000 years old. If this is true, the dam is marvellously well preserved. The only reason it is no longer functioning is because an earthquake literally pulled it apart, leaving a gap through which a river runs when there's been enough rain. The dam is roughly triangular in cross-section with small steps on both sides. These steps are not worn down or deteriorated in any way and you can walk right up the side of the dam if you don't panic because of the unbelievably steep angle. The top is flat and 'so wide that two horsemen riding over might pass each other,' to quote Doughty, the explorer. The surface of the dam still retains a thick, protective, mortar-like coating that seems to resist wind, rain and sun admirably.
A cold wind whistling Late in the day, several other members of the expedition arrived, all of them having driven right across the country. They made their way down into the gorge to camp while we stayed on top to minimise exposure of our tyres to the lava. Of course, a cold wind was soon whistling over the flat lava, but we were well protected, snug inside our Land Cruiser from which we had removed the back seat. Surprisingly, our best sunset picture of the whole trip was taken in this lonely spot, with nothing on the horizon but a scraggly bush.
Sharp and irregularly shaped basalt The rest of our party arrived the next morning, after driving all night and somehow had the energy to lead us off to the Khaybar gas station right on time. John Weatherburn had been to the Black and White volcanoes twice before and was leader of the expedition. We were supposed to fill our tyres with air at the gas station. Whereas driving on loose sand requires lowering the tyre pressure to 15 pounds, exactly the opposite is required for driving on lava. The tyres should be rock hard, exposing as little rubber as possible to the sharp and irregularly shaped basalt.
An undulating sheet of black It turned out there was no air at the gas station, but this presented no problem to our trip leader, who had brought along not one, but four compressors in his Land Rover. Soon, spiralling orange tubes were snaked out across the ground as the pumping ritual began. When all the tyres were as full as possible, we rumbled east out of the gas station and were soon lost in great clouds of white dust. An hour or so later, the dust ended and the lava began in earnest, a great undulating sheet of black, crisscrossed by tracks going off in every direction.
Zigzagging The problem with navigating over lava is that you can't just aim for a spot and drive towards it. No, you have to get there via somebody else's path which eventually leads you off on a diagonal. Then you have to tack back the other way, slowly zigzagging toward your goal. Around mid-day, one of the vehicles in our party suffered a blowout. Considering the sort of terrain we were driving through, it's amazing that this was the only blowout on the entire trip. It turned out to be a long gash on the side of the tyre, the kind of hole you can't seal with sticky liquids or inserts. After changing the tyre, we proceeded even more slowly.
Razor-sharp rocks Unfortunately, we proceeded right down into a place that soon slowed us down further. This track twisted down a steep slope and was well sprinkled with razor-sharp rocks. Even worse, the track kept getting narrower and the turns kept getting tighter as we descended, until I wondered whether this path was originally designed for a go-kart. We reached several points where we had to pass through huge rocks which scraped our tyres on both the left and the right. My wife Susy had to jump out at every turn and attempt to move rocks which were often heavier than she is. I was gnashing my teeth, my eyes glued to the ground. When we finally stopped to camp, all of us felt exhausted, mainly from worrying about tyres.
Ouch! Ouch! We woke the next morning to sunrise over the most jagged and menacing wall of lava I've ever seen. This kind of lava is known as aa which is pronounced 'ah! ah!' This is supposedly Hawaiian for 'Ouch! Ouch!' the first words that would spring to anyone's lips while trying to walk over it barefoot. However, the aa lava surrounding us was so inhospitable that I can't imagine man or beast even thinking of setting foot on it. Somehow, the track we were following didn't seem so awful now that we'd seen what it was helping us to avoid.
Shimmering creamy-white walls A few hours after escaping from the gully, we found ourselves on an easy track and suddenly, in the distance, we saw the shimmering creamy-white walls of Jebel Bayda. We were going to make it after all! We approached the line of demarcation where the black lava of Jebel Qidr meets the beige lava of Jebel Bayda. The comendite looks white only from a great distance but actually represents a variety of colours from ashy to orange. Up close, you can tell it is much older than the black lava, which has a fresh look as if it had been spewed out yesterday. In fact, volcanologists say that Qidr's last eruption may have occurred as recently as 1880.
Floating on a roiling sea Walking on this lava is like being on the surface of a great pot of boiling, sputtering, splashing tar which has solidified in the blink of an eye, allowing visitors to fully experience the essence of liquidity while roaming about on a solid surface. In some places, you find ropy lava which resembles long braids of twisted cord. Then, there are smooth, flat blocks, which seem to be floating on a roiling sea, like great chunks of a broken ice flow. Just as smooth are long, undulating 'worms' several metres wide, which provide an easy walkway in the midst of chaos. This was pahoehoe lava at its best. Pronounced 'pa-HOY-HOY,' this is just the opposite of aa lava and perhaps represents a joyful exclamation among those lava-walking Hawaiians.
Qidr's deep maw Our group's original plan was to climb to the top of Jebel Qidr on day one, but so much of the day was already gone that only one member of the party managed to reach the top, gaze down into Qidr's deep maw and climb back down before sunset. He was able to note and photograph the entrances to several lava tubes, which are caves formed when hot lava drains from under a crust which has formed on the surface of a flow. There are so many of these tubes on the sides of Jebel Qidr that their smooth, pahoehoe roofs can be used as convenient 'highways' for climbing the volcano. All indications are that not a single one of these caves near Qidr has ever been explored.
Frost! Next morning, we experienced something we hadn't expected to see in Saudi Arabia: frost! Only after the sun came up did it melt off our car windows, at which time we were ready for the long climb to Bayda's rim, walking up one of the steeply inclined 'buttresses' of the giant ring, feeling as small as fleas in comparison with its size.
Moonlike beauty We finally made it to the rim, from which we could gaze down at the inside of the crater which is round and a kilometre and a half in diameter. It has an almost flat floor and contains nothing but two small cones of grey ash. The crater resembles a giant pie crust waiting to be filled. The sterile moonlike beauty of this scene both attracts and repels. Of course we hiked down to the floor and up the two cones, but the truth is that we found nothing that we hadn't already seen from the top. The only sign of life we saw was a very lonely grasshopper. What could it possibly find to eat in a place like this?
Chocolates and petit-fours While there is little to be seen inside the crater, everything that surrounds Jebel Bayda is truly awe-inspiring. As we walked around the rim, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of Abyad as well as many other impressive cones and craters which mostly looked like partially melted chocolates and petit-fours. Every one of them looked well worth exploring and capable of enchanting visitors for weeks. Of course, the most attractive of all was splendid, perfectly symmetrical Jebel Qidr surrounded by its great mantle of fresh black lava.
Exciting archeological discoveries Off in the distance, as far as the eye could see, there was a bed of basalt which stretches from Medina to the Great Nafud: over 20,000 square kilometres of lava dotted with over 300 extinct volcanoes and 39 massive 'whaleback' lava flows, named for their distinctive shape. It looked like a place where no one could possibly live, but the truth is that these lava beds are sprinkled with the ruins of ancient walls built during Neolithic times. Such walls almost completely surround Jebel Abyad and promise that this area may yield exciting archeological discoveries in the future.
Spices and incense
This is not so surprising in
view of the fact that these volcanoes lie only 65 kilometres
due east of the ancient caravan trail which brought spices
and incense from Yemen to Madain Saleh, Petra and Rome. This
trail, like all the others on the western side of the
Arabian Peninsula, winds its way through 89,000 square
kilometres of lava fields. In all that vast distance, who
knows how many other magnificent sights lie hidden,
protected by great stretches of impassable aa rubble? Surely
many other discoveries will be made, but they will have to
be truly extraordinary to surpass the beauty of the amazing
black and white volcanoes of Harrat Khaybar.
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arrat Khaybar is a lava field
located in western Saudi Arabia, north of Medina. In the
middle of this vast ocean of jagged basalt, rise two
shimmering white volcanoes. Jebel Abyad, at 2093 metres, is
the highest volcano in the area. It is a dome of whitish and
cream-coloured lava that has been squeezed up out of the
earth like toothpaste. Just west of it, shaped like a giant
doughnut the colour of vanilla ice cream, lies Bayda, an ash
cone 1913 metres high, which was formed by an explosive
eruption of gas beneath the molten rock. Both are mainly
composed of a rare, beige lava or ash known as comendite.
