Route type: Circular
Difficulty level: Easy
Distance: 9.4 km
Waze to start/end point: 33.216888, 35.641211
Notes:
- Good for dogs
- Bring boogie boards or inflatables, water shoes, bathing suits, towels
Once again in search of a nice long drive, beautiful location – who doesn’t love the north? – and a water hike on a hot day, we headed up to the Kiryat Shmoneh area.
Lower Nahal Hermon is a water hike that you never get tired of. Even in the summer when the hoards are out, this place never feels crowded.
The Waze coordinates are for a really good place to park your car. It’s a secluded spot, tucked away in a stand of tall eucalyptus tree that provide shade for your car all day. Once you’ve parked, walk back up to the road, make a right, cross the bridge and make another right just after the bridge.
For a while you walk down a path banked by berry bushes and tall pampas grass and other water-loving vegetation, a sure sign the creek was nearby. The berries are in season now so we nibbled as we walked.
Keep the creek always on your right down to Kibbutz Sde Nehemiya (about 4 km), then get out and walk back the way you came all the way to your car. You can’t go wrong.
We made a mistake and jumped into the creek a bit too early. We saw a really good place with easy access but found that there were a number of areas where there were either small rapids or logs fallen across the creek that we had to climb over or go around or curtains of trailing brambles hanging down into the water that we tried to push through very carefully but both of our inflatables ended up getting punctured.
We were in the water by 9:00 am and it was cold but not as frigid as I’d been expecting. It was really invigorating. For a while my friend and I shared this massive inflatable in the shape of a heart. It was kind of like having a Siamese twin or one of those three legged races. We had to try to stay in sync which wasn’t easy and there were lots of shrieks of laughter as the current kept trying to shunt us over into the shrubbery hanging down over the banks on either side. At times the creek was too shallow to float so we stood up and shuffled forward together with the big red heart around both of us.
I had taken what was supposed to be a waterproof backpack for a couple bottles of water, my car keys and my cell phone. The backpack turned out to not be waterproof at all so it’s very fortunate that I’d wrapped the car keys and cell phone in a double layer of ziplock bags.
This walk is so lovely and green and cosy with a lot of good creek access points all along the way. The water is mostly ankle to thigh high with only a few spots that were neck deep on me (I’m 5’7″) but we quickly dog paddled through those.
At a number of spots, someone had rigged up Tarzan-type rope swings.
There is a point where Nahal Hermon (on the right in the below picture) meets Nahal Dan (on the left in the picture) and by merging they become the Jordan River. It’s cool to see the exact point where the Jordan River is “born”.
Fifty shade of green?
Get out of the water when you see the bridge spanning the creek next to Kibbutz Sde Nehemiya. You will also see the fence around the kibbutz on your left.
We power walked back to the car via the creekside path and it took us about 1 hour 15 minutes. Keep the creek on your left on the way back.
As soon we began the walk back, we found this lovely…park?…right outside the back gate of the kibbutz. A paved path with grass, shade trees and benches right on the bank of the creek. Can you imagine living in that kibbutz and having all that green coolness at your fingertips on those long, hot Shabbat afternoons? I can only dream of such things.
