Friday, January 15, 2016

The Wahbah Crater



Last weekend, my family, a friends family, and me all went to this crater called the Wahbah Crater. It was a five-hour drive from where we live. We started climbing down to the bottom, but about 1/5 of the way we stopped, and my friend, her dad, my dad, and me continued to the actual bottom of the crater.



The Wahbah crater is a 250 m (820 ft) deep and 2 km (1.2 mi) wide crater located on the western side of the Harrat Kishb plateau, Saudi Arabia. It is formed by an underground volcanic steam eruption generated by magma coming into contact with underground water. The bottom of the crater is covered with white sodium phosphate crystals, which is a kind of salt crystal. Since the crater is surrounded mostly by non-climbable cliffs, we took a path down to the craters bottom from the North side. It's the only prepared path there. This crater doesn't usually get many visitors, even on weekends. We only saw about 3-4 groups, apart from our own, and it's hard to miss people down there when you are going up or down.




So, mostly we had fun. It was great to go down. I loved it! Especially the view from the top. Amazing!


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