So I've been planning this hike in the Golan since I heard there
was such a hike in Israel. It's 120 km crossing the Golan Heights from north to south. At first I heard it takes only 4 days...but now I know better.So Micah, my next door neighbor in Domeville, said he would go with me on this hike and so we started planning... Well I'm not the greatest at planning and evidently neither is he, lol. Thank G-d this is Israel and a small country so if you get stuck hiking in the mountains and have no water then the closest place for water isn't too far. Our planning consisted of (1) buying a map of the region of the trail (2) asking our Madrich where to go to start the trail (3)planning to bring the amount of food we thought we would need to carry (4) packing a hiking backpack with the usual camping gear.
Day 1 - Friday, Dec. 3
So, off we were to the north on Friday, Dec. 3. We leave the farm at about 8:30 in the morning and were on a bus to Kyirat Shmona by 10:30. Arrive by 2 pm. (Everything stops running early on Friday to get ready for Shabbat) So, we left our directions of how to get to the trail head back at the farm... oh well, we're in a small country so we take a bus heading east and to try to get to the Harmon Ski Resort, where the trail starts. Well we find a bus, the last bus of the day, and the bus driver takes us to Snir, about half way. By 3 we're hitch hiking. By 4 a car of hippies picks us up and tells us they aren't going to the Harmon but that we're welcome to come sleep in the woods on the mountains amongst some Syrian ruins. Ok, whatever it's getting late and we wouldn't be able to start any hiking so late in the day anyways.
These guys are serious hippies!! They have an entire hippie ville up there in the mountains. An outdoor kitchen with a mud built fire pit,
instruments instruments instruments (they really took their music seriously... for almost the entire night and next day), tent ville (6 + ours), shit pits complete with ash to cover up the smells and water bottles for washing, all next to a mountain spring that you can drink from and heat the water to take a nice warm bucket shower. 
Tent ville is just off an old Syrian road leading up to some ruins and deserted olive orchards.
Turns out the hippies are keeping Shabbat. So, we have no way of getting out of this place, that we don't really know where we are, up in the mountains. Although it's so relaxing and beautiful that we don't really want to leave. They sing Shabbat songs and baked their own bread in the fire and even lit the 3rd night Hanukkah candles.
Day 2 - Saturday, Dec. 4
We stay for Shabbat. We hiked up the mountain with the Syrian ruins overlooking the Hula valley and Kyirat Shmona off in the distance. At night they light the 4th night Hanukkah candles.
Day 3 - Sunday, Dec. 5
We get a ride out to the main road to start hitch hiking to the Harmon. Turns our the main road is only 1/2 km down and we feel pretty ridiculous having waited a day for this ride out, especially when we're about to start a 120 km hike.
Finally a Druz guy driving a huge truck picks us up and miraculously is going exactly where we need to go, about 40 km farther and up the Harmon mountain to the Ski resort.
After lunch we ask some people working there where the trail starts, since we can't find it. It starts about 2 km down the road.
YAY!! 1:30 pm we're finally starting our hike! Here's how happy we are at the trail head.
It's an amazing view hiking down Mount Harmon!We make it 6 km on the trail, down Mount Harmon, to Majdal Shams and then find a place off the trail to set up camp.
Day 4 - Monday, Dec. 6
We wake up in the morning to pouring rain.
So we wait until about 9, when the rain subsides, to get back on the trail. It's just above freezing, and raining on and off, and there's a fog that's keeping us from seeing any more than 10 feet ahead of us.
Only about an hour down the road we run into a bunch of Israelis just starting to pack up camp to brave the cold, rain, and ridiculous wind that picked up on the side of the mountain.
We pick up a couple of 18 year-old Israelis who are about to turn back because of the weather. Nadav and Matias decide to keep going on the trail another day with us. They just finished high school and are waiting to go into the army. They had a 3rd guy with them who had his dad come all the way from Arad, in the south, in the middle of the night to pick him up because he couldn't handle hiking with a backpack. And this was only after the first day.... And believe me it wasn't nearly that bad.
The rain stops in early afternoon and the sun starts to peek out of the clouds over a small moshav up here.
We hike 16 km today because of the late start and bad weather.
Day 5 - Tuesday, Dec. 7
We're out at around 8 am and on the trail. The guys decide to go home because their bags are too heavy since they brought too much food and all of their stuff is wet because they didn't have any rain gear. The trail is still a bit foggy but at least it's not raining.
The Golan Heights were won in the '67 war against Syria (The Six Day War). Israel needed these mountains for strategic and defense reasons against Syria. To this day, Syria still isn't peaceful with Israel because they want the Golan Heights back. There are no open borders between Israel and Syria and there is even a no man's land along the border of the Golan Heights. So there are signs everywhere in the Golan reminding you of the history of the area. We hiked past old broken down tanks, old bunkers on the tops of hills and mountains, through land mine zones and IDF firing ranges.
Hiking through some vineyards.
We got to Har Bental, an important bunker in the '67 war.
It was a pretty stupid trail they made us take down the mountain. It just
went over the side of a cliff so we ended up sliding halfway down the mountain.At the base of Bental we start hiking through cow
pastures. Yeah the Golan has more cows than people. It feels like never ending cow pastures and trudging through cow shit.
One thing that's amazing everyday in the Golan is the sunsets.
It was an amazing day hiking. Starting in the fog and ending with this sunset after about 24 km. We meet up with a couple other Israelis, Zahavi and , and set up camp on the side of a cow pasture, next to Ein Zivan.
Day 6 - Wednesday, Dec. 8
We start early (we always want to leave by 7 am and we're getting closer) at 7:30 am. It's hard to pack everything and do breakfast when the sun only rises at 6 am and it's so cold in the morning. I'm so warm in my sleeping bag, PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME WAKE UP!
We start off at another bunker next to some wind turbines.
A part of the trail was a road leading up to an army base, and as we were hiking a big water truck was coming up behind us so we had to move off to the sides of the narrow road to make room. Micah was off the road to the passenger side and I was off the driver's side. We were stopped and waiting for the truck to pass but the truck stopped right in front of us and in the exact spot so that all the water that came sloshing out of the truck splashed on me and Micah on both sides, then all the exhaust that was coming out of the truck was blowing in Micah's face. So the truck just stopped in the middle of the road to do this to us and we just threw up our arms because we couldn't understand why the truck would stop there. Then he finally saw what he di and just drove off. So, for the rest of the day we were just laughing our asses off about why the truck did this stupid thing.
There's not too much stopping time for pictures and it's basically all cow pastures today anyways. It's pretty easy flat hiking so we figure to get to "Choshnyia" and set up camp. Zahavi keeps looking at his map and saying that we'll just get to Choshnyia and then stop. Well, we aren't too smart because we thought there would be a place to stop and get water along the way but there's NOTHING along the trail, just cows. Ok, so now we all only have 3 liters of water for 4 people, so we keep going because we must get to Choshniya so that we can be close to a town to get water.
So we keep going...and going. Zahavi says we'll cross a road and then be 2 km from Choshnyia. OK... keep going. 2 more kilometers from Choshnyia!! 4 pm it starts getting dark and cold and we feel like we've been hiking a lot more than the 9 km we thought we had from our last tea break to get to Choshnyia.
We finally get to some ruins and say screw Choshnyia, we need to set up camp while there's still some light and we'll worry about getting water tomorrow morning. It turns out this was the most beautiful camp spot along the trail. We set up our tents under a grove of Eucalyptus trees next to some ruins. Even though we're worried about our water situation we still build a big fire and sit around laughing with each other for hours.
Day 7 - Thursday, Dec. 9
We decide to take the morning easy. We find out that we passed this "Choshnyia" about 10 km back and we had hiked almost 30 km in trying to get to Choshnyia and we're only 3 km from the next town, Yonatan. So "2 km to Choshnyia" becomes our joke since we never really got there or somehow passed it because were looking so hard for it.
The Dananir ruins are tombs in a stone building. I don't really know much about them but they looked pretty kewl.
We go into Yonatan and fill our water bottles and buy bread and hummus and sit on a lawn in the sun and take our time enjoying lunch.
We hike through more cow pastures in the afternoon.
An interesting pile of rocks in the middle of all the cows.
And a small stream that has the only green grass for miles around.
Turns out we've been hiking through a firing zone.
We camped in Daliyot next to a major highway. All through the night there were trucks taking tanks to the north non-stop. It felt a bit scary because why do they need so many tanks so far north.
Day 8 - Friday, Dec. 10
YAY! the first morning and only morning we actually started hiking at 7. WOW it was hard but rewarding.
A random tire.
We start hiking down into a canyon. We have no idea what it was the start of.
The stream running down inside the canyon is crystal clear and a small oasis there. We get to hike across it, through tangled vines and water thirsty fig trees.
6 hours after hiking down into the canyon we're on our way out. This is looking back at where we began our day through little paradise.
Now we're out of the canyon and we know the Kineret (the Sea of Galilee) is somewhere in front of us but we keep passing bends in the trail and still don't see it. So it starts getting dark and we think we might give up trying to find a nice place to camp over looking the sea. Then all of a sudden we take a turn and right before us is the Kineret and the sunset that we couldn't see until this point! It's all worth it!
But now we're on the side of the mountain with no flat ground for our tent and some nasty looking clouds are rolling in. The winds pick up like crazy as we're setting up our tent and then as it's almost dark it starts pouring and almost blowing us off the side of the mountain. But there was still a good view of Tiberias across the Kineret.Day 9 - Saturday, Dec. 11
We walk into the next town about 6 km up ahead to get water. And we're ready for a break from the rain, cold and wind. Well since it's Shabbat nothing is open so we stop a car driving by to ask where we can get water. And the people in Ramat Hagolan are some of the nicest people on earth and tell us to go to their house across the street for water. When we go to their house the woman makes us come inside out of the rain and sit for coffee since they say the storm is too dangerous to hike in (and it's true because the area floods). So we sit for coffee and they were going to open the community center for us to sleep in for the night while the storm passes. But Idan, the guy who came to get us was our age and told us to come sleep at his house. He rents a house with the woman's son, Gal, who is also our age. So we go over there and they with the only other 4 young people in this moshav are all hanging out at their house. These guys are all so nice and funny. They're blasting metal out of their speakers and jumping all over the house, then they buy 2 bottles of vodka and pizza and all of us just to party all night to metal music. lol. Unforgettable!
Day 10 - Sunday, Dec. 12
We wake up late and we're not sure if we can continue hiking because the storm is so bad. But we decide we really want to try because we're only 16 km from the end. We've come so far. So we decide that if we leave our bags we can go faster and then hitch hike back. So we set off with one of the guys from the house. 
It's cold and the windiest day yet. We can't even talk at some points because no one can hear what you say. We also have to walk through so much mud because everything is soaked and there are now small rivers flowing through every low point.
We make it down into another smaller canyon with a now raging river that at some points is impossible to cross and we have to walk off the trail pretty far to find how to keep going. But we make it and just mostly muddy and a little wet after all the river crossings and sliding down the muddy trail into the canyon. Thank G-d we didn't have our big hiking backpacks this day!!When we got out of the canyon we came to the road and were maybe 4 km from the end of the trail. They say it ends on a cliff overlooking the Kineret. Well at this point it started raining pretty hard again and if we continued any farther we wouldn't be along a road that we could find a road back. So, even though I wish we could have really finished the trail correctly I'm still happy with all we did. So we went back to the house and stayed another night because there weren't any buses out that night. It turns out that this was the worst storm in 20 years and that they had to close roads in the Golan because the land mines were being washed onto the roads. In hindsight it wasn't smart of us to hike that last day but we were lucky and even had some fun at the terrible conditions!
What a trip!
