Hurghada's 'Everest' Is a Three-Day Climb 45 km From Town — and Nobody Runs Scheduled Trips to It

Gebel Shayib, the highest mountain in the Red Sea Governorate, stands 2,187 metres about 45 kilometres south-west of Hurghada — and anyone who wants to reach the top has to get a trip arranged specially. Bashar Abu Talib, head of the Red Sea tourist guides syndicate, told Youm7 that climbs to the summit are not run on any regular schedule and happen only when a particular group asks for one.

The demand is there. Abu Talib said a large number of European tourists, especially mountaineers and people working in geology, are keen to make the ascent. Going up and coming back down takes about three days, he said, and the descent is the harder half — it takes longer than the climb because of the terrain.

Two details from his account matter to anyone planning it. Roughly halfway up there is a natural lake that fills with flood water during the rainy season, which climbers use for drinking and washing. And the mountain has cave-like rock formations spaced roughly every 300 to 400 metres, used as rest points on the way to the top.

Shayib is Egypt's third-highest peak after Gebel Katherina and Gebel Musa in South Sinai, which is why climbers and safari operators call it "Hurghada's Everest". In clear weather it can be seen from parts of Qena Governorate and from the Sinai Peninsula. Salim Gomaa, a member of the Maaza tribe in Hurghada, said desert families also know it as "Shayib al-Banat", a name that comes from its shape: in the first light of day it looks like an old man, and from other angles like an upturned crescent. Bedouin travellers used it as a navigation marker between the valleys.

The governorate's other two peaks

Youm7 sets Shayib alongside the next two highest mountains in the Red Sea Governorate:

• Gebel Hamata, 1,977 m, far south of Marsa Alam inside the Wadi El Gemal protectorate
• Gebel Elba, 1,435 m, in the Halayeb and Shalateen area at the southern end of the governorate

Saad Abu El Hassan, a member of the Ababda tribe in Marsa Alam, said Hamata is one of the most important habitats of the Egyptian gazelle, and that Red Sea protectorates run programmes that monitor the animal by tracking its prints through the valleys and mountains. Flood water running off the peak into the surrounding valleys feeds the plants and grasses the area's wildlife depends on.

Ahmed Ghallab, director of Red Sea protectorates, said Gebel Elba holds rare plants that grow nowhere else in Egypt, foremost among them the dragon's blood tree — Dracaena — from which the ancient Egyptians extracted a red substance used in mummification.

The report gives no price for a Shayib climb, names no operator, and points to no plan to put scheduled trips in place.