Sunday, February 24, 2008

Nahal Pratt Part 1: The Beginning

I recently went on a hike with MOSAIC, an Anglophonic Israeli (that would be me) hiking group, through Nahar Prat (the Pratt River,) which the Arabs call Wadi Kelt. Like most desert wadis, it starts out as a small stream which, over the eons of flash flooding, has cut a deep groove through the surface of the earth. Coincidentally enough, the stream starts right in the back yard of my old house in Pisgat Ze'ev.

The winding road leading down to the river.


Fording the perilous rapids of the Nahal Pratt. The river was rushing with runoff from the recent snows.
A small swimming pool near Ein Pratt (the Pratt spring.)
And now we're out of the gorge. The village on the hill behind us is the Jewish settlement of Anatot, the home village of Yirmiyahu HaNavi (Jeremiah the Prophet.)
Rainwater and melt from the recent snows soaks through the porous upper layers of the soil until it reaches a layer of hard bedrock, where it oozes out. Here we see water running down the slope of the harder bedrock.

Time for a coffee break, complete with camping burner. Caffeine addiction is not for amateurs.

Chillin out on a water pipeline. The pipe was actually built by the British during the Mandate era to bring water to Jerusalem. After Israel captured this area in 1967, it was no longer needed, as it was cheaper to bring water up from the coast.

Yours truly, in front of the gorge. The walls are so steel and neat, it looks like something a water engineer like me would have designed.

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