Climbing the Golan Heights! Part 2

General
1

Continued from Part 1 . . .

This morning I woke up again at 5am and MUnied out of Kibbutz Ein-Gev crossed the main north-south highway and rode about a kilometer through Ein-Gev’s Banana orchards until I got to the base of the Golan Height cliffs. Today the cliffs were much steeper and I took a rough jeep trail up the face of the cliffs. It had tons of swichbacks as it worked it’s way up. I was not able to ride the whole way up today as I had done yesterday. I Munied for a few minutesthen walked for a few minutes and then sat down to rest and enjoy the view of the Sea of Galilea.I kept up this rotation of ride walk rest the whole way up the cliffs. It took me about 2 and a half hours to make it up to tha top. Probably about 3 km in distance. Once at the top I found the
amazing ruins of the ancient city of Susita. Amazing, because of the amounts of fine pillars and cobblestoned streets and buildings of black basalt rock. This ancient ruined city is a paridise of trials! I was quite exauseted by the hard climb up but I still managed to climb up and go down some ancient stair sets and jump from pillar base to pilar base. It then took me about 25
minutes to go down the decent. The same jeep trail that I took up. It was pretty rough with ton’s of tennis ball to grapefruit sized rocks and lots of half foot drops. I made it the whole way down with no UPDs! Since I don’t have a brake on my 24 I concentrated on going faster than I normally would in order to conserve leg muscles by contantly backbedalling. Since it was still early once again I rode to lakefront and enjoyed a cofee andice cream before my wife and kids woke up.

My wife took the caera out of my pack so all the pictures today were taken with my cell phone. No self timer and pretty bad resolution. I did try to get in the flavor and scale of this trully amazing ancient city.These rides were very exciting for me because it was the first time that I have reidden MUni
outside the Jerusalem mountains and coastal plane. I am now waiting for FLUCK!

Unicorn

Image081.jpg

Image082.jpg
Image082.jpg480×640 25.1 KB

Image083.jpg
Image083.jpg480×640 28.4 KB

Image084.jpg
Image084.jpg480×640 31.8 KB

Image085.jpg

Image086.jpg

2

I enjoyed the read and the pictures, Unicorn.
Did you take any pictures of the Sea of Galilea while resting?

3

Looks like a nice place to ride.

Do you know how old those ruins are?

4

Answers Answered.

The city of Susita is at least 2,200 years old. I know that because of all the greek influences in it. Alexander the Great conqured Israel and was good to the Conquered Jews and gave them religous freedom. The Hashmonian’s kicked out the Greeks under emperor Antiochus some years later around 170BCE in a bloody revolt with the slaughtering of vast Greek/Syrian armies. This is the story and reason for the Jewish celebration of Hanuka. The hashmoneans then set up a dynasty of Jewish manarchs until the Romans finally crushed Jewish revolts around 70AD.
The city of Susita was a very wealthy city. I can tell you that the pillars and ruined buildings there were just immaculate!

Yes, in the one picture I was just resting after the ride on a promenade right over the Sea of Galilea.

Unicorn