The Snake Path

The path starts at the Snake Path cashier's booth beside the Palm Tree car park, in the eastern complex reached from Route 90 along the Dead Sea, and ends at the Snake Path Gate at the entrance to the mountain top. Between those two points the parks authority puts 350 metres of height, about two kilometres of walking and about 900 steps. It grades the difficulty high and gives the ascent as about an hour, which is an hour of continuous climbing rather than a walk: the route doubles back on itself across the east face the whole way, which is where the name comes from.

The surface is not one thing. The parks authority's own accessibility note describes a steep earthen path, much of which is built as steps with handrails fitted the full height. The steps and the railings are twentieth-century engineering laid along an ancient line; the stretches that are simply packed desert soil are the ones that still read as a path rather than as a staircase.

Opening is tied to sunrise and closing is tied to the forecast. The path opens for ascent about an hour before sunrise, and the parks authority tells visitors to look the sunrise time up themselves rather than publishing it. In ordinary hot weather the last ascent is 10:00 and the last descent 11:00; in very hot weather 08:00 and 09:00; in extreme summer heat 07:00 and 08:00. Underneath all of that sits a flat daily rule that catches people out in winter as well: the path closes for ascent two hours before the park closes, and for descent one hour before.

• 350 m of climbing over about 2 km, with about 900 steps
• About an hour to the top, difficulty graded high
• Opens for ascent about an hour before sunrise, every day
• Last ascent 07:00 and last descent 08:00 on days of extreme summer heat
• Closes for ascent two hours, and for descent one hour, before the park closes

Josephus gives the rock two ways up: one from the lake towards sunrise, and another on the west, where the ascent is easier. The eastern one, he writes, 'is called the serpent; as resembling that animal in its narrowness, and its perpetual windings'. He has it breaking off at the prominent precipices, returning frequently into itself, and forcing a walker to go first on one leg and then on the other, with nothing but destruction if the feet slip.

His measurement does not fit the path people walk. Josephus has the serpent running thirty furlongs before the top, and in the same passage gives Herod's wall around the summit as seven furlongs, carrying thirty-eight towers. The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on Masada, written by the archaeologist Guy Stiebel, puts the measured casemate wall at about 1,400 metres, with roughly 70 rooms, 30 towers and four gates. Read the two ancient figures on the same scale, seven furlongs against a measured 1,400 metres, and thirty furlongs comes out at something over five kilometres, against the two the parks authority measures today. Either the ancient route was far longer and looser than the one now signposted, or the figure is the sort of number an ancient writer supplies for effect.

There is a smaller disagreement about which face the path is on. Stiebel places the Snake Path Gate in the north-east, one of the wall's four gates. Britannica describes the winding trail as being on the mesa's north-eastern face. The parks authority says simply the eastern side. On the ground the difference is slight: the path works up the east face and lands at its northern end.

The route was lost and recovered in pieces. Charles Warren and Claude Conder of the Palestine Exploration Fund surveyed Masada and the Roman camps in 1865 and located the Snake Path. In January 1942 Shmarya Guttman led what the parks authority calls the Masada Seminar, in which 46 members of the HaNoar HaOved youth movement surveyed the mountain and found further sections of it.

The full course came out of the first Israeli archaeological expedition, which Guttman brought to the site in the 1950s and which also identified the water supply system and recognised the Northern Palace as Herod's. That expedition unearthed and reconstructed the Snake Path Gate. The year is worth pausing on, because the operator publishes two: the English version of its Snake Path page says 1954, while the Hebrew version of the same page, and its own page on the plateau, both say 1953.

What visitors climb is therefore a reconstruction with an ancient line beneath it, and the parks authority's wording is careful enough to quote as it stands: the part of the Snake Path that visitors can now climb 'was built based on the ancient path'. The steps, the handrails and the graded surface are modern. The switchbacks, the exposure, and the fact that a route exists at all on that face are not.

• 1865: Warren and Conder of the Palestine Exploration Fund locate the path
• January 1942: 46 members of HaNoar HaOved find further sections during Guttman's Masada Seminar
• 1953 or 1954: the first Israeli expedition traces the full route and reconstructs the Snake Path Gate
• Modern: the built steps, the handrails and the graded walking surface

The Snake Path Gate is where both ways up now finish. The cable car that replaced the 1971 system in 1998 climbs from the eastern complex to the same gate, entered across a suspension bridge, so a walker arriving on foot and a passenger arriving after a three-minute ride step onto the plateau at the same point. The older car did not do that: it stopped below the summit and left its passengers a staircase to climb.

Immediately by the gate stands the commander's headquarters, which the parks authority describes as a series of rooms decorated with frescoes, most of them geometric patterns or imitation marble and some with plant designs. It is the first Herodian interior on the route and the easiest to walk straight past, because most people arriving up the path are looking for a bench rather than for wall painting.

From the gate onwards the mountain is a different order of comfort from the face below it. The parks authority lists concrete paths on the plateau, toilets, railings on steps, benches and shaded gathering places, entry to most of the key complexes and lookouts, and models and relief maps made accessible to visually impaired visitors.

The timetable is written around the forecast because of where this is. The World Meteorological Organization records 49.9°C at Sedom, on the same shore, on 17 July 2019, the highest temperature measured anywhere in Israel since June 1942, when Tirat Tzvi reached 54°C. Long before a reading like that becomes a record it becomes a hazard on an open rock face, and that is what moves the last ascent back to 07:00.

The risk is not theoretical. In May 2015 a 20-year-old American student, Briana McHam, died after a fall from the Snake Path during a heatwave in which the Dead Sea region went past 40°C. A Magen David Adom paramedic quoted by The Times of Israel described finding her at the foot of the cliff, unconscious and showing signs of heatstroke, and the report notes that her group did not realise she was missing for over an hour. The same day, on another trail in the region, 56 walkers had to be brought out.

Winter carries the opposite hazard. The parks authority warns that in winter, spring and autumn flooding is a danger, tells visitors to check the Israel Meteorological Service forecast shortly before setting out, and says not to walk in or cross wadi beds when flooding looks likely. The path itself climbs out of that ground quickly; the approach roads and the wadis at the foot of it do not.

Walking up and riding down is a common plan, and it costs extra. Entry to the national park, cable car excluded, is ₪37 for an adult and ₪21 for a child, with ₪31 for a student or an adult in a group of over 30, ₪18 for a child in a group and ₪19 for an Israeli senior citizen. A one-way cable car ticket, which does not include entry, is listed on the parks authority's Hebrew price table at ₪32 for an adult and ₪16 for a child; the return fare is ₪54 and ₪32. The Yigael Yadin museum in the same complex is a further ₪20 and is entered by reservation only.

The descent has its own cut-off, and it is earlier than most people expect. On days of extreme summer heat the path shuts for descent at 08:00, so a walker who set off at first light has a narrow window in which to come back down the way they went up. Anyone outside it takes the cable car, whose last entry is an hour before the park closes.

The Snake Path is also not the only way up on foot. The Roman ramp path climbs the western flank from Arad on road 3199, takes about half an hour and is graded intermediate, and it is a separate entrance with a long drive between the two sides of the mountain. Two further eastern routes exist and are much less used, the Runner's Path and the Elazar Ascent, and the parks authority closes both at 07:00 on days of extreme heat.