Hiking Makhtesh Ramon (Ramon “Crater”)

This week, a couple of friends from a closed local hiking group and I went to two days hike in Makhtesh Ramon to celebrate my birth day (29). Even though I passed through Makhtesh Ramon dozens of times with my car, this was my first time ever hiking inside it.

First Day: Mitzpe Ramon to The Carpentry

We began our hike in Mitzpe Ramon at the Mountain Negev field school where we parked our car and began to walk on the MaKhtesh wall to The Camel “Mountain” viewpoint.

From there we began our way down inside the crater, it took us about one hour as we did it slow and steady. Inside the crater, we went for two hours more enjoying its beauty, in every other step the color of the rocks are changing between red, yellow, orange, pink and black. There were also a lot of different plants thanks to good winter we had this year in Israel.

We finished our day hike in “the Carpentry,” where we left one of our cars (this place is accessible from the main road). Unfortunately, it was already late (After sunset) and we had to bring our other car. We did our night at Gevanim Camping lot which surprisingly was pretty quiet and not a lot of hikers parked there (It’s Passover week right now in Israel)

Day #2 – Sa’aronim Mountain

Sa’aronim Mountain is the mountain at the Southern part of the crater. We began our day walking all the way between Gevanim parking lot to Be’erot Parking lot through Wadi Gevanim which is also 4×4 road. Near Be’erot parking lot there are some ruins of a Nabataeans Caravanserai where we take a stop in the shade of its walls. From there we continued to Sa’aronim Natural Spring which had water flowing and a lot of plants and went inside Ramon Gate (which is also the entry point to Nekaot Stream hike)

After walking inside Ramon Gate, we began to climb up to Sa’aronim Mountain. It was a very very stiff climb, which I wasn’t expected at all, and I have a habit that I don’t stop in the middle of the climbing, it took me about 10-15 minutes to climb it to the top, and I used most of my energy. But once I finished the climb I got my reward!

A panoramic view of the crater from the southern side, it is a point of view I’ve never had!