If you want to beat the heat, you don't have to take a trip to the mall

“It’s impossible.” That’s the almost inevitable refrain whenever I mention the prospect of doing any outdoors activity at this time of year.

It’s usually followed by declarations of amazement about how anyone survived the summers here back in the days before air conditioning and about how malls are the only viable place to go to escape cabin fever from watching too many DVD box-sets at home.

But there are some zealots who insist on defying this supposed unassailable fact. You can see them running or cycling around the Yas Marina Circuit on Tuesday nights, hauling kettlebells as part of a weight-training regimes, cycling the Emirates’ deserted roads on Friday mornings and even climbing mountains.

I’m fortunate to count some of these zealots as my friends.

It should be noted that there are times when the naysayers have a point about the heat. Each summer, a group of us climb one of the mountains just over the border in Oman, although admittedly this is more to make a point than for the inherent enjoyability of it.

The first year we tried this, we started in full darkness an hour before dawn, reached the summit about half an hour after the sun rose and were back at the cars by 9.30am, just as it was getting uncomfortably hot.

The feasibility of this venture was partly thanks to the modest height of the peak but mostly because of the strident admonitions of Rene, the trip leader, who urged everyone along by saying things like: “C’mon, we have to keep moving because as soon as the sun rises, everything will burst into flames!”

Last year we chose a higher mountain and made a later start. We paid a high price for that tardiness by returning to the car at 1.30pm. The experience was most accurately summed up by one of our hikers, who burnt the tips of her fingers while clambering down sun- baked rocks to the point where her iPhone’s fingerprint recognition software couldn’t read her prints.

But for each trip that might most optimistically be described as a useful learning experience, there have been many more in which defying the convention about summer outdoors activities is richly rewarded.

Canyoning at Hatta Pools is one. Over the years, I’ve helped shepherd a few hundred people through the easy upper gorge and the more sporting lower canyon near the famous pools. It has always been feasible, no matter how hot the day.

Just as reliable as the pools is the sense of doubt as we drive through the desert towards the mountains. On our most recent trip a couple of weeks ago, my car’s dashboard thermometer was showing 48°C as we crossed the desert outside Al Madam.

But just how different conditions can be only an hour from Dubai was demonstrated when the skies clouded over and darkened as we drove around Jebel Hatta.

“It looks like it might rain,” I said, still not quite believing what I was seeing. But, sure enough, a few minutes later fat, heavy raindrops were falling and the temperature plummeted down to 33°C, a temperature that I hadn’t experienced for months. Notwithstanding the rain, we drove with the windows down and the air conditioning off just for the sheer novelty of it. One of the meteorological near-certainties of an Arabian summer is an absence of rain and while this departure from the norm would usually be welcomed, it was not well timed just before the start of a canyoning trip.

But after half-an-hour and just as water began flowing from the wadi banks into the canyon itself, the rain eased and then stopped. We set off a little apprehensively but the rain continued to hold off and we navigated our way into the lower canyon.

At one point, the canyon walls are 15 metres high, meaning little sunlight reaches the bottom. After that there is a short section of cave, where the walls join at the top and aeons of floods have carved a channel through the rock below.

This area never sees any direct daylight and even when it’s 50 degrees outside, in here the temperature is cool enough to rival any air-conditioned mall. If only the naysayers could see past their prejudices and find out for themselves.

There are some zealots who insist on defying this supposed unassailable fact