When we planned our trip to Oman in November 2014, terror attacks—according to several media reports—were on the daily plan on the Arabian peninsula. Because we wanted to get our own picture of the situation, we decided to go there and have a look. I don’t want to oversimplify, but from what we saw, I guess the chances of being affected by radical activists in Oman are maybe as high as the chances of being struck by lightning.

When we arrived at the sultanate in mid-November it was still very hot. We decided not to try to identify specific routes and just climb the most beautiful lines that appeared in front of our eyes. In the end we did a few new lines on various formations and had one of the best rock trips ever: El Schuppo on the north face of Jabal Asala (500m, V+); Fantastica 2.0 (250m, VI) and Straight Up (200m, VI+) in Snake Gorge; and Crux Line (370m, VII) in Wadi Tanuf.

The routes are not super-hard, but we climbed in a clean style without leaving a single piece behind. The grading of the routes is similar to that in the Dolomites.

- Lisi Steurer, Austria, and Felix Tschurtschenthaler, Italy