Morocco - The Atlas Mountains
In August 2018 my friends and I visited the Atlas mountains of Morocco and walked up Mount Toubkal. Despite my camera having a horrendous light leak I managed to get a few photos of that walk.
We had envisioned a hike though the Atlas mountains off the typical tourist route, following the Berber trails. It became apparent after the first day of ascent that we weren’t equipped for this route. I remember feeling the exposure of the desert mountains, not being able to hide from the sun and slipping down constantly. The scree was so loose it made it very difficult to climb. So, after reaching the top we decided it was unsafe to press on any further and opted to go back to base camp.
Morale was down but we wanted to climb Toubkal so we set off for the small village of Imlil and set up camp for a day. After a days rest we headed for Toubkal which was a 2 day walk from Imlil.
We camped just behind the wall on the right of this photo. This little farmers hut had a garden on the other side that was growing tomatoes. Unlike how i have seen them grown before, these tomatoes were grown freely in the ground creating a giant tangled web of tomatoey loveliness!
It was good to get back on the trail and there wasn’t many people on it at all, it must have been the end of the season. The majority of the trail looked like the picture below. It does make it look quite flat but over the two days we walked from ~1800m to ~4200m.
From what I remember, this is the Refuge campsite we stayed at before our ascent of Toubkal. The run-off on the left hand side was sewage. mmmmm.
The next morning we woke up very early and started our ascent of Toubkal in the darkness, hoping to reach the summit by sunrise. Climbing in the dark was great! We then reached the top! Here is me feeling pretty good about the whole thing!
A man also feeling pretty good about reaching the top.
Finally, we finished off by heading to Marrakesh and looking around the markets. One Item I bought from a man in the mountains was a Trilobite fossil which I’m quite fond of! The Trilobite is an animal that was from the Paleozoic era - between 252-541 Million years ago!
