This is a database I quickly built in 2020 of 100 artists that exhibited in Saudi Arabia. Give it a couple of seconds to load, and click on “View larger version” to open the full database.
COVID19KSA.com | A Coronavirus tracker for Saudi Arabia
Covid19ksa.com was created to act as a single multi-lingual resource to track covid19 spread in Saudi Arabia. The project started out at a time when the only available resource for covid19 case spread data in the Kingdom was the Ministry of Health’s daily press conference and underlying tweets. That is, until covid19.moh.gov.sa - the country’s official arcGIS dashboard and singular resource for case data -, became available. The dashboard works well as a quick view to see total city-by-city case progression, but had a set of important deficiencies, namely:
The inability to easily view Today’s Update. This includes change in deaths, recoveries, and infected cases per city.
The inability to change dashboard language beyond Arabic and English. This is important, since as many as 80% of those infected in the Kingdom come from outside the country.
Covid19ksa was built to counteract these deficiencies.
We felt like this website has run its course, and has provided information for the earliest period of the pandemic spread in the Kingdom. The website was discontinued on June 30th, 2020.
Big thank you to Nawaf Alnaji and Mohammed Alawami, without whom the website would not have been possible. Big thank you to Carto for providing software via the Carto COVID19 Grants.
Climbing Communities Group Directory
Link: Climbing Communities Group Directory
During a recent 6-week trip through Europe, I became frustrated with how difficult it was to find local information on climbing areas; many of the areas had a vibrant climbing community, but it was hard to access them on the ground. On the other hand, every region in the world seemed to have a community Facebook group. I built a crowdsourced directory of most of the community climbing facebook groups in the world.
Big thanks to the more than 50 contributors from climbers around the world! If you know of any more locations, please feel free to add them.
Developing Saudi Arabia's first outdoor sport climbing areas
Link: Routes on Mountainproject
Link: KSA Climbing Areas Map
Link: Climbing Guidebook
In November of 2018 as part of my work as Director of Ops for the Saudi Climbing Federation, I had the opportunity to oversee the development project for Saudi Arabia’s first outdoor sport climbing areas. This included scouting potential locations, hiring a team of developers, getting the appropriate equipment, and documenting the outcomes.
The Team
When we had the chance to hire a team, I reached out to a number of potential developers from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe. I had spoken to the lead developer over technical, environmental, and logistical considerations over a number of occasions. We needed a team of 4, and they invited Alexandru (Alex) Ruscior, and Italian mountain guides Carlo Giuliberti (the team’s rope gun) and Piergiorgio Lotitio to the team.
The Equipment
The team had picked most of the equipment. One important part left was the type of bolts to be used. There were two options: Expansion bolts or Glue-in bolts. Expansion bolts are at least 2x faster to install, but could be unscrewed by people (anchor theft had been a problem in other areas of Saudi in the past), and might need retightening in the future. They were also unsuitable for soft rock, since they work by pushing on the inside of the hole, and would break soft rock. Glue-in bolts take longer to install, and need a full 24 hours before they can be tested (since the glue has to dry). However once installed, they can’t be uninstalled without breaking the rock.
The team’s argument was that both of the prospective areas were hard rock, and therefore using expansion bolts would allow for a greater number of routes to be developed, would be cheaper, and easier to install. My view was that whatever bolts were installed, they were going to set the pace for any future development, and would have to be built to last without maintenance or fear of loosening/corroding/tampering for years to come; I had read enough reports of areas developed with expansion bolts, only for some part of the system (bolt, hanger, or rock) to begin failing 5 - 10 years down the line. Leftovers glue-ins could also be used in other projects across Saudi, which is primarily composed of soft sandstone. We eventually went with glue-ins.
The Area
Initially the goal was to develop one area near Riyadh, and another near Jeddah. However after scouting a number of locations around Riyadh, I found the areas to be too loose, too remote, too small, or a combination of all three. I read reports about potential areas near Jeddah, and flew out there with a friend to check them out. We drove Jeddah to Taif along the northern road crossing Mecca and through Alhada and towards Taif. Nothing was big enough.
At the end of the day we drove to Al Shafa, a popular nature area southwest of Taif, where David Black, one of the early climbing explorers in Saudi, reported a climbing area among expats in the 90’s and early 00’s. I had been in communication with him for a few months, and he flew out to Saudi to help scout locations. There, next to Jabal Al Qaraniyat, we rediscovered Olympic Crag. Steep, hard rock (granite), and enough for at least 100 routes (see picture below).
The second area was Al Sharaf Park in Tanomah, a two hour drive north of Aseer. The area had been lightly developed in the 90’s by a team of American expats living across Saudi. However, the old bolts had been rusted and were no longer safe to climb on. Nevertheless, the potential was promising. It turned out the rock was sandstone with granite streams, rather than fully granite, and we were glad to have to have chosen the glue-ins.
The Development
The team spent 5 weeks in Saudi, in which they developed 74 glue-in routes excluding extensions ranging from 4th class to 8b in difficulty. A number of routes are yet to be free climbed.
The Documentation
An important part of fostering an environment conducive for the development of the sport was providing easy access to information. The team created a mini guidebook PDF of the areas, including all routes and environmental/access concerns, which can be found here. But as anyone whoever used a PDF knows, they are bad for filtering/search and are too rigid for easy access. We thought about creating a routes app or listing them on a custom-made webpage, but my view was that simple was better. I added all routes to Mountainproject. I also built a map of all climbing areas in Saudi.
The Naming
I had the chance to name a number of the routes in Al Shafa. Many of the names are inspired by popular 90’s Spacetoon cartoons (character names, show names, etc). You can look through the names on the Mountainproject link above and try to match the name/show.
Al Muntahira (The suicidal — thought that someone threw themselves off of it years ago) later renamed to Olympic Crag, paying homage to climbing joining the Olympics.
Al Sharaf Park in Tanomah.
Alex Ruscior on Skybridge in Tanomah
Finding KSA's Real Highpoint
Link: Technical Report Documenting the Results
Link: Matthew and Eric’s Project Blog Post
Last year I had the opportunity to invite longtime friends and fellow members of the MIT Outing Club Matthew and Eric Gilbertson to Saudi Arabia as part of their 10+ year project to be the first in history to climb the highest point of every country on earth.
The project was especially interesting since different surveys listed multiple elevations; some listing Jabal Al Souda (جبل السودة) - which is officially recognized as the Kingdom’s highpoint - as the higher of the two, while others listing the seldom-climbed Jabal Ferwa’ (جبل فرواع) as the highest.
On August 17 and 18 of 2018, Matthew, Eric, myself, and a team of hikers invited from across the Kingdom climbed the two mountains in southwest Saudi over the two days. The team found Jabal Ferwa’ to be approximately 3m higher, at 3001.8m in elevation than Jabal Al Souda, at 2998.7m, thus making it the new true highpoint of Saudi Arabia.
Matthew and Eric wrote a technical report documenting the results, which can be found here. The full trip blog post can be found on Matthew and Eric’s Country Highpoints website.
P.S. I’ve reached out to the Saudi Geological Society on a number of occasions to document the results, but have not received a response.
The team at Al Souda’s trailhead. From Right to Left: Eric Gilbertson, Albatool Baroom, Roua Basaad, Matthew Gilbertson, Me, Iyad Aldalooj, Hattan Alasali, and Ryan Olson.
Jabal Al Souda’s summit is located behind a communication tower, next to some cool petroglyphs. Pic: Ryan Olson.
Jabal Ferwa’ is a remote mountain an hour south of Abha, and doesn’t have a trail.