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Hey guys — new to the forum, but thanks, Stiv, for the invite. It’s nice over here.
I wanted to open up a topic relating to the Israel National Trail (INT). I’ve traveled in Israel over the past seven summers and I used to organize and lead tours there. Last summer I decided I was tired of seeing it through a bus window, so I hiked the Israel National Trail with my brother and my best friend. We hiked a little over half of the 600-mile trail, in several segments.
The trail begins at Tel Dan, near the Lebanese border in the north, and zigzags southward, passing near or through Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Zichron Ya’akov, Netanya, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Kiryat Gat, Arad, Dimona, Sde Boker, Mitzpah Ramon, and Eilat (to name a few). It ends just east of the Egyptian border crossing at Taba, on the Red Sea. The trail is a virtual cross-section of Israel’s geography, history, and culture.
Few native English-speakers have hiked the trail because there are currently no English-language maps or guidebooks. As far as I know, the only English maps that show the trail are 1:500,000 scale road maps, which are wholly inadequate for the hike. The Israel Survey 1:50,000 topo maps are the best, but are largely useless unless one reads Hebrew.
However — and this is why I’m posting — non-Israelis can still hike the trail, as long as they can handle getting lost from time to time. The trail is somewhat well-marked, although some out-of-date blazes on an old section of the trail nearly killed me in the Negev Desert. I think the INT is sort of a diamond in the rough — there are few trails like it anywhere else in the world, and it’s more than worth the effort.
So I’m working on creating English-language resources for the trail. Along with some volunteers, I’m coordinating the Israel National Trail Data Project, which aims to create a preparation guide for non-Israelis who want to hike the trail, a data book that gives a landmark-by-landmark description of the hike, and a map book with English-language topographical maps.
If you want to learn more, you can check out our website at http://www.israelnationaltrail.com. The plan is to do a thru-hike in 2008 to create the data book, and coordinate with an Israeli map publisher to create the map book. The preparation guide is already in the works. Until the resources are completed, though, I’ve been advising numerous hikers who are trying to organize their own thru-hikes of the INT. So if you have any questions, feel free to post them here and I’ll do my best to answer.
And though many of you have no doubt traveled in Israel (and it’s not such a place-we ain’t-supposed-to-go), I can answer general questions regarding Israel as well.
Best,
redharen
Exactly — the Trackstick will be awesome for what I want to do. That’s why I was asking about the feasibility of giving other people access to a course I’d plotted out in Google Earth. I’m sure there’s a way, though.
The Trackstick won’t solve the larger problem of the lack of paper maps for Israel, unless someone wanted to print off a bunch of Google Earth topos, which, last time I checked, weren’t too detailed in that part o’ the world.
So the Trackstick will be a backup and a useful tool, but the first-string plan is to carry a GPS unit and a digital voice recorder, so I can say, for example, “Kilometer 23.5: water source 500m to the east of the trail,” etc. Then I’ll compile the landmark-by-landmark info into a stripped-down trail guide.
Couldn’t you just use a GPS with waypoints to plot the course? Then you could sell/ give away the waypoints for use with any GPS device. There was a some guy doing that with the Coast To Coast walk in the UK that I saw.
I have actually checked out your website before when I was researching doing some walks! Small world and really glad to have you posting here!
Well, right now, the plan is to record waypoints all along the trail, and use those waypoints to create a data book. In all honesty, it had never crossed my mind to sell the raw data.
Not sure if a lot of people would go for it; not everyone is a fan of high-tech stuff out on the trail. Lots of the e-mails I get asking questions about the trail tend to be from purist types. Then again, they’re hiking in the Middle East with no knowledge of local languages; pre-recorded GPS waypoints would be a good insurance policy.
Glad you ran across my site, man. Small world indeed. Good to be here at this forum…it’s a little easier to breathe here than at some other “travel” websites.
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