Nephi uses the word "wade" (1 Nephi 17:1) in describing the journey eastward from Nahom. According to Potter and Wellington, it is interesting that Nephi used the word "wade," just as someone might use it to describe "wading through water" or "wading through soft sand." The Rub'al Khali has sand dunes which are at times 700 to 800 feet high. [George Potter and Richard Wellington, Discovering the Lehi-Nephi Trail, Unpublished Manuscript, 2000, p. 146] [See the commentary on 1 Nephi 16:38]
“We Did Travel and Wade Through Much Affliction in the Wilderness”
According to the Hiltons, the map shows two sections of travel from Lehi's valley of Lemuel (near Aqaba) to Bountiful (on the Oman coast) where water is so scarce that travel would be difficult. The first is the journey from Jiddah, in Saudi Arabia, to Al Qunfudhah, which is close enough to the nineteenth parallel that it may have been [close to] Lehi's camp Nahom, where Ishmael died. Here water was spaced out an average of twenty-four miles apart. The second sandy stretch appears on the eastward leg of the journey, running from Najran (near Nahom) in Saudi Arabia to . . . Oman (Bountiful), where water was found every twenty-six miles on the average (with the longest waterless stretch being sixty-six miles). Interestingly enough, these two segments of the trip seem to have caused Lehi's party the most suffering, according to Nephi's account (1 Nephi 16:20, 17:1) [Lynn and Hope Hilton, In Search of Lehi's Trail, p. 98]