Mount Hermon 🗻

Hi,
We picked ourselves for the last day in our family summer vacation during Coronavirus and climbed to Mount Hermon.

Mount Hermon is the highest mountain in Israel (2,236m above sea level) although the mountain pick is on Syria (2,814m high). It is also the North most point in Israel.

As the North most point it means it is also the border with Syria and Lebanon. Add the fact it is the highest point and you can realize most of mount Hermon is not accessible and closed for military use.

There are special tours during summer time to a view point over the ridge. We been to one some years ago and planned to get to another yesterday. Unfortunately because the scratch Mindal got from Luna, the cat living where we have been to, she had to get vaccine for Rabies and we spent the morning among hospitals.

Jannaeus was anyway more excited about the riding up and down the cable car. Now there are closed cars, not open sits as we had in the last time. Which are much less frighten to be when the system stop and you hanged in the air. 😉

Take Care
Gad

Cows in the Hermon site lower parking lot, keeping the lines

The Hermon ski site. During summer time there are several attractions, and above all the cable car to the top of mountain.

Looking down from the cable car

The cable car building – much more massive than what you would expect, that is for the several meters of snow which cover the site each year.

On the way up the mountain we realize the traffic is pretty heavy. On the parking lot I realized it is the yearly Marathon Hermon which ends on the pick.

Looking down

And to the West over Lebanon

The new monument commemorating the Sayeret Golain warriors  who fell in the Hermon battle (the old one was made of chalk stone and collapsed some years ago): This monument commemorates four Sayeret Golani soldiers who fell on the Hermon mountain during the Yum Kippur war. All four soldiers were decorated for their heroic fighting during that war.
The Hermon outpost fell into the hands of the Syrians on the 1st day of the Yum Kippur war, October 6th 1973. Two days later, the Golani infantry Brigade failed in their attempt to recapture the Hermon.
Towards the end of the war, on the eve of October 21st, the IDF attacked again: A force of paratroopers was dropped by helicopters on the Hermon Syrian outpost and on the summit of the Hermon and blocked the Syrians from the North. At the same time, forces from the Golani Brigade, including the Sayeret, set out on a difficult climb, ascending from the west, until they reached the upper cable car area. at 02:00 AM, on the morning of October 22nd, the battle begun.
The Sayeret commander Shmaryahu Vink, was hit next to the monument. Gili (Gilad) Litan, standing behind him attempted to carry him away but was hit by a burst of a gunfire. Eitan Polanski, the medic, who hurried to their aid, was also shot. Ezra Finnstein, another Sayeret soldier was shot dead by a sniper fire. One of the combatants, speaking about the Sayeret commander said: “On a stretcher, with his throat dry, he whispered his last words: ‘we must not retreat from the Hermon.'”
80 Golani warriors and four paratroopers fell in those battles, after seven additional hours of fightning, some of the Syrians began to reatret, while other surrendered. By noon, the Israeli flag was raised at the Hermon outpost, along with the flag of the Golani Brigade.

The memorial with the names of the dead of Sayeret Golani dead on 22nd of October 1973.

The other side of the memorial, with same names

The end of Golani ascent on which the Golani brigade soldiers climbed to reconquered the posts on mount Hermon on Yum Kippur war

Panorama view from the monument

Panorama view for the cable car top

Looking to the other side (East), you quickly meet fences and border signs

The Israeli Hermon mountain pick on the left – 2,236m above sea level.