You might notice that there are two colors of ground in this picture – black and white. This is because these mountains are sitting on top of two separate tectonic plates, slowly moving away from one another. The other set of black mountains are across the Arava Valley (southern Israel). For millions of years the mountain ranges have been split, leaving a section of white desert in the middle.
Check out more pictures of this hike up Mt. Shlomo and of the Negev in the HUC Negev Tiyul set on my flickr page.
Rabbi Brian Immerman 
Oh I’ve done that hike! At the point where one of the black peaks meets one of the red ones, there’s a plaque that says that as you step from one color of sand to the other, you’re crossing sometihng like 5 million years of geology, but some ass with a pick scratched out the number 5 million.