Mt. Yoash

Mt. Yoash Review

This lookout along the border road with Egypt is an easy trip from Eilat. Notice the huge storage tanks as you drive along Route 12; they belong to the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline. After you pass the tanks, you enter the Eilat Mountains Nature Reserve, with Nahal Shlomo, a dry riverbed, on your left. Drive 12 km (7½ mi) into the reserve and turn left at the orange sign for Mt. Yoash; then drive another 1 km (½ mi), bearing right up a rough, steep, and winding stone road. Park and take in knockout views of the alternating light and dark ridges of the Eilat Mountains; the cities of Eilat and Aqaba; the mountains of Edom, behind Aqaba; the start of the Saudi Arabian coastline and the Nahal Geshron gorge, emptying into the Red Sea at Taba; and the plain of Moon Valley and the mountains of Sinai, in Egypt. A beautiful two-hour hiking trail begins in the parking lot. The Jordanian army operated a strategic post here at the summit until March 1949, when Israeli forces took it during the last campaign of the War of Independence. The raising of a makeshift Israeli flag here (an event commemorated by a sculpture next to the Mul Yam shopping mall in Eilat) marked the end of the war. To get to Mt. Yoash, leave Eilat from the junction of Route 90 (Arava Road) and Yotam Boulevard, traveling west on Yotam (which becomes Route 12), with a tourist center on the left.