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Karkur Rouzzi
The last uncharted valley of Jebel Uweinat |
During the 25-28th period of April 2006, a group of dedicated Saharan travellers completed the reconnaissance of the Emeri Highland, located in the SW part of the Jebel Uweinat (Gabal Alawaynatt or Gebel Auenat), in Libya. The Emeri Higland is accessible only by foot. It is enough to say that only one single scientist ever visited the place before our 2005 party: he was Prof. Umberto Mònterin from the Turin University, during the expedition organized for the Italian Royal Geographic Society in 1934. A man of the same category and temper of the first alpine mountaineers of the pioneering era, a man capable of climbing the Mount Rosa wearing a tweed jacket only. The scientists of the 1968 National Belgian Expedition, notwithstanding the full logistical support of the Belgian Army, did not visited the area because they considered it too much difficult to access. In fact, high temperatures and rugged topography require a well planned organization, dedicated to exploration by foot not by motorcars.
Hiking the Gebel
Uweinat, during the midday peak of light and temperature
Hiking on Emeri is a complex, highly technical task.
A big difficulty is represented by the lack of detailed topographic maps. Actually, Emeri is a labyrinth of rocks not fully resolved by the publicy available Landsat TM or Aster satellite images featured by a resolution equal to 14 meters. It is interesting to remember that during WWII even a military special squad personally lead by such a commander as W.B.K Shaw experienced insurmountable difficulties. Anyway this time the stake was high and it was perfectly know how much; in 2005 we discovered 10 new rock art sites, some exceptional. The shear beauty of the place was itself another special reward for the experienced hiker: no wheel tracks, no garbage, no mass-tourism.
A breathtaking beauty, almost difficult to stand...
Hopefully the mass-tourism that is now polluting the Gilf Kebir and even the Uweinat Massif along its base will never show on these last square kilometres of true desert. Therefore we did our careful planning to enjoy a new exploration as soon as possible; by the end of April all the people involved in the 2005 expedition was ready to hike, all whishing to be there again. Only few more hikers were allowed to join the team. By joke we nicknamed the group “the Emeri Club” , with a non-serious reference to the historical Bagnold’s Zerzura Club or to the Almasy-Bermann’s Gongoi Club (Bermann Richard A. (1938) – Zarzura, die Oase der kleinen Voegel – Zürich. Büchergilde Gutenberg).
When friendship is more than a vague notion: Chinotto time!
You have to be in love with the Libyan Desert to understand the whole matter. Temperature at the end of April was dramatically higher than at the end of March, peaking above 44 degree Celsius between 13.00 and 16.00. It is very hard to hike during the heat peak; it is a challenge to the human possibilities especially if you have to carry all the water, food and equipment needed to survive three days in total autonomy within such a completely dry and hot environment. Water consumption was about 4,5 litres par day. The medium weigh of our backpacks was about 30 kg. Why we choose such an unfavourable period of the year to hike? The weeks between April and May benefited of three holidays days in Italy... it was an enough good promotion for us to be committed to the adventure!
The ceiling of this large shelter is covered by hundreds of pictures, 6000 years old. This site
was found thanks to data kindly provided by Telespazio.
(photo: P. Carmignoto)
Preparation to the hike was really High-Tec. Our exploratory program met the scientific sponsorship of Telespazio, the Italian Company leader in space imaging and communications. Telespazio provided us with the high resolution images of our Area Of Interest acquired by the Quickbird satellite. With a 60 cm resolution (two feet) in visible and infrared bands, we were able to study and plan our routes through the rocky labyrinth. Studying these images on a good HR monitor is like a virtual reality experience; at the end of few hours you feel exactly as you did a low altitude flight. Personally I felt the same sensations I lived flying by helicopter a few meters above the glaciers and rocks of the Busonland and Dixonland regions in the Svalbard, but without noise and accelleration. On the Quickbird images it was possible to count the acacias threes one by one, examine the boulders that had a chance to be good shelters hosting new rock art sites, identify the places with the best potential for human settlement in the Prehistoric past. Threfore we built a complete GIS project using the best professional GIS software and analysed a large variety of data. Consequently, by converting raster information to vector features we compiled an extremely detailed vector map of our AOI, ready to be loaded on the most modern cartographic GPS devices.
Vector maps were compiled from high resolution Quickbird images and loaded on our cartographic GPS devices.
Logistic up to the Base Camp where we abandoned our fleet of 4x4 cars was provided by the “Mehari Team”. Once on the field we were able to hike 65 kilometres in three days and half, successfuly avoiding any possible topographic obstacles. It was a good performance. Anyway our scope was not to do a desert marathon; it was to explore in the real sense of the word, i.e. in the very geographic meaning. In the third millennium exploration seems a void word. After all humanity is now sending robots to distant planets to do what a time was possible to do on Earth: discover horizons never seen before. Indeed, exploration is not completely an outdated word, not yet. In the great Sahara atleast, thanks to the laziness induced by the modern 4x4 cars, exploration is still possible by foot. We are 100% sure that the panoramas we shot with our digital and film cameras were never shot before. So enjoy the novelty represented by the few images shown on this web page. They are the first ever collected on a place that was previously known in its details only from the high resolution satellite images, as it was a piece of land belonging to another planet! We reached Karkur Rouzzi the last uncharted valley of the Emeri Higland the 28th of April. The beauty of the places was more that an award. It was a paradise, although after midday it was as hot as the hell. Anyway do not search Karkur Rouzzi on the Atlas. Since this valley do not have a name we were compelled to find an acceptable nickname. Thus we choose “Karkur Rouzzi”. Karkur is the local Tebu word for wadi. Rouzzi is the name of the first Tebu guide who is know to have revealed the existence of the Jebel Uweinat to the Arabs in the XIIX century.
What we got from our adventure beyond our personal satisfaction? We documented another 10 new rock arts sites,living messages from a very distant past. Images 6000 years old that speak to us about the way of life of people that lived on the Uweinat Planet, once a planet full of life, now a planet where life is still present but reduced to minimal terms, we could say to a larval stage. We also got the first photographic images of the Mònterin Cave, a large cave the was visited just once in 1934 and then lost and forgotten. We descended the pit that halted Mònterin and another 2 meters deep step to discover that the cave continues beyon a third step...
The magnificent Mònterin Cave, a cave carved in the granite but with spleothemes!
We correctly identified the entrance thanks to the Quickbird Images. Many thanks again to Telespazio!
In some respect we were very lucky men: between our 2005 Expedition and the 2006 one rainfall occurred on Jebel Uweinat, as documented by the green vegetation found the past autumn in Karku Talh (in the Sudan sector) by the Hungarian explorer Andras Zboray. Rainfall on the Jebel Uweinat are very rare, few times in a century at intervals that could be measured in decades. The rainfall occurred during the late summer 2005 and a lot o vegetation grew up and was still growing during the 2006 spring, even if at a relented pace. Therefore we got the extraordinary opportunity to get pictures from before and after a rainfall. Some acacias that apparently were dead in 2006 now, in 2006, were literally covered by green leaves, other bore an incredible large amount of pods.
The Emeri Highland is no more a terra incognita, known only to the sad Libyan poachers, the bad boys hunting the last unlucky Barbary sheep. It is part of our personal geography, for ever included in our beloved archipelago of loved lands, “terre amate” in Italian. A detailed report of the Emeri 2006 Expedition with the description of the scientific results is in progress and will be published in the next future.
You can read another Internet report (in Italian) about this expedition by following this link.
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