The Lion King 8B by Jana Švecová

Jana Svecova has done the FA of Lion King (8B) in Al Tawian. This was her second trip to United Arab Emirates and together with her boyfriend they have put up some 100 boulders 5B to 8B. "Today, the last climbing day of our stay, 15 tries, no success I even made a split during the last unsuccessful try and gave up. An hour later, while going to the car, I decided to give a couple of last tries with the tip of the index finger taped, and surprisingly the no expectation helped! Even without warming up, I managed to send it first try🏆😍🔥"

Could you tell us more about your trip and the potential in the UAE?
We came to the United Arab Emirates for two months. We decided to go to the Emirates because we know that the weather is basically great all the time. Most of the time it is about doing FAs. Now when we experience the weather in December, next time we would choose January and February because the temperatures are even lower in these months. There are plenty of valleys, but you have to search for the one where water flows annually :) but I would say there is a lot of riverbed climbing. The valley of Tawaian is several kilometres long and we made two sectors, separated by just a couple of hundred meters. We for sure went to explore the valley a little further and there were so many even bigger boulders… I would say that valley only could have up to 500 boulders.

Were there already locals climbing at this spot?
This year we met already a couple of people climbing there. The topo is almost done, I think that will make it a lot more accessible and the climbing community in Dubai is quite big. I guess (nearly) nobody knew there is some good climbing around. If anyone wants the topo, they can just reach out @uae_bouldering on Insta, The guys will be happy to share it and there is a climbing festival 25/2 :)