I made my way up the road slowly, having grown accustomed to my geriatric gait in the last few weeks of trekking around with all this stuff, and went in to the visitor’s center. There were a bunch of multilingual signs in Hebrew, Arabic, French, German, and English, offering information about the monastery, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and the grounds. I browsed through with a handful of other visitors, and after I had used the restroom and filled up my water bottle at the drinking fountain, I was off.
There were only two other people on the trail ahead of me—the French tourists. From the looks of it, I figured they’d gotten a fifteen- to twenty-minute head start. The path was rocky and very dry, and it was hard to be certain where the actual trail was underfoot. For the first hour, there was just a slight incline, so I spent a lot of the time taking in the scenery. Even though it was late morning and the light wasn’t very good, I snapped a few pictures every now and again.
Slowly, I could feel the ground get a little steeper and rockier, so I dug in, kept my eyes on the ground in front of me, and kept plowing up and ahead. My shirt was sweat-soaked, and I was hot, but I was still feeling pretty good. My guidebook said that a person in decent shape could hike the mountain in about four hours. I figured I’d tack on another hour or hour-and-a-half to that, because of my heavy packs. I’d be up on the top well before sunset, and with plenty of time to scope out my shot. So I kept going… making sure to drink my water slowly—in sips, not gulps.
Another hour and a half passed, and the next time I looked up, the French were tiny ants on the landscape! Was I really that slow? I thought I’d been steaming along at a good clip. Had they veered off and taken a different path? Determined to make good time, I kept climbing.
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