The first time I visited Oman was in 2011, together with the very strong "seniors" Sigi Brachmayer, Horst Fankhauser, Oswald Oelz, and Albert Precht. This climbing trip was really important to me for exploring and understanding the area. I returned in 2013, 2014, and again most recently in 2020. This time in Oman we were four: Martin Sieberer (Austria), Manuel Baumgartner, Dietmar “Diddi” Niederbrunner, and myself (all Italy). For the others, it was their first time climbing in the desert.

We arrived at the end of January, and we even camped near the same acacia as I did in the years before (we used its shadow as a kind of fridge and for hanging up our gear and food).

As the temperatures were high, we mostly climbed on the north side of Jebel Kawr, across the valley from the well-known south face of Jebel Misht. It’s in the shade all day and offers mostly good rock quality.

The day after our arrival we immediately started climbing, never repeating a route but always climbing new lines in two parties of two. The second day, Diddi took a long fall when a hold broke, but he was very lucky that a small nut held the fall, and he got away with only a large but shallow scrape on his thigh.

As the rock in Oman is made out of shell-limestone it is very rough and sharp—both our gear and our skin was suffered heavily. So, after two weeks in the area of Jebel Misht and Jebel Kawr, we decided to do a short road trip to recover. On the way back to the main city, Muscat, we stopped to climb in Wadi Bani Awf and at Hadash, where we were lucky to meet all of Oman’s "local climbers" at once. Oman is quite big, but the local climbing community is not bigger than 10 people! Again we were pleased with the hospitality of the Omanis. Thanks to them we will definitely come again.

Over the course of these three trips, we have completed 36 new routes (16 of them in 2020) on various formations, which we left as clean as possible. We did not use any bolts but left several pitons and threads fixed for future ascents.

More information on these routes is available at my website: simon-messner.com. [Editor’s Note: More information on Jebel Kawr can be found in reports in AAJ 2016 and AAJ 2019.]  

– Simon Messner, Italy