For the first time we saw the Atlas before us in all its kingly elevation; now the eye roamed from its dark forest-clad base to the snowy masses which broke through the clouds that softly swathed its upper zones and above them gleamed against the blue sky, seemingly not of the gross earth at all.
Joseph Thomson, 1889
Asni is a wedge of green thrust into the red world of the mountains, lush with fruit-growing and the setting of a huge Saturday souk which draws villagers from up on the Kik plateau and all the valleys draining from the high peaks. For the rest of the week, it is Sleepy Hollow although the changing post for leaving the Tizi n’ Test road and heading for Imlil. The view is made bolder and wider for anyone prepared to walk the Kik Plateau edge, that rufous Stanage Edge that dominates Asni.
We’ve often patronised the local youth hostel. It occupies a scenic site by the Oued Mizane, with panoramic views up to the Toubkal massif, surrounded by old olive trees. The dark or dappled light explodes here and there in outbursts of almond blossom and rows of translucent white iris. Facilities are fairly basic but clean and the family that runs the hostel are friendly and helpful. They are relatively new, a previous family having been there for most of the forty years I’ve known the place. They only gave up when the warden’s illness forced a move to Marrakech. One of their boys was mentally handicapped and could rather surprise hostellers. He tended to sleep in a cellar which was also used by roosting hens and a store for straw bales, reached by some steps from the hostel yard. The visiting hostellers could be having breakfast with the serins and bulbuls calling the day awake, when there would erupt, seemingly from the bowels of the earth, a raving figure dressed in rags, straw and feathers flying, voice roaring. I’ve seen unknowing hostellers take to their heels, but the boy was harmless enough.
The bane of our life there was the dog. He was friendly and would come long walks on the Kik Plateau with us but he too grew old and his limbs arthritic and painful. ‘Nice doggie’ he may have been but when he sat outside the dormitory window and barked all night he was called stronger epithets. Poison was the favourite suggestion for dealing with the problem. One night ten of us, ragged from sleeplessness, were about to consume my whole supply of sleeping pills when I hit on a simpler solution: we gave the dog a sleeping pill.
A rattle-bang-stop-start run in a minibus took me the 17 km up the Mizane valley to Imlil. There were 17 people on board (two on the roof with the baggage), hens and a sheep under the bench seats. The sheep leaked. The road up was built in the years 1931–34, saw little use in the war and in 1947 was severely damaged by floods and only re-opened in 1952. Before that, one took mules from Asni to Aroumd (the original CAF refuge). With the building of the sturdy CAF refuge (1954), Imlil was born. One benefit of this mountain tourism has been a greater number of local children can remain in the area, for almost anything would be better than being forced off to Casablanca and its illusory streets of gold. Heading west from Imlil we would not encounter another European for the remainder of GTAM. I recovered from my journey in the Café Soleil.
Imlil is an important staging post on the Toubkal trail and Toubkal aspirants would do well to overnight there. Asni is 1150 m, Imlil 1740 m, the Toubkal refuge 3207 m and the summit 4167 m, so acclimatising is sensible. However, I saw one lot of Italians, straight from Marrakech, loading mules to go to the high hut there and then. Once they’d gone, though, the peace returned. The muleteers played cards. I had another café au lait. A chatter of young city women, half in western clothes and teetering about in high heels, half in brilliantly coloured kaftans, were enjoying an adventurous day out.
The tourist tends to encounter only the male-dominated activities but, in reality, everyone has their place. The men sitting playing cards are not idlers, they are muleteers, waiting for their turn to be engaged. Their behaviour is no different than waiting London taxi-drivers doing exactly the same. Looking down from the eyrie of Aït Idir’s balcony the fields are seen to be dotted with the colourful figures of women or girls gathering fodder or keeping an eye on a bony cow. Once I heard the comment from a visitor. “Seems only the women work the fields.” My retort was a brief “And who do you think built the fields?” A couple of generations ago the men had to be fighters before anything else. Imlil, like most valleys, is dominated by a fortified site (agadir), which bears a close similarity to home defences for Border warfare or clan feuding. Men are also the traders and travellers so, naturally, the women stay at home and run things and see to the crops. As did Rob Roy’s wife. Highland life has many similarities: life at a saner pace.
Staying at Targa Imoula the women prepare our meals yet, on the trail, both Ali and Hosain were the expert cooks. Mohammed’s wife Ayicha in fact is not the best cook I’ve known, although she is improving with practice. Ayicha cooked, did the laundry, looked after the kids, cared for the cow and made rag rugs. Mohammed was a mountain guide, a crofter, a trader. Both worked, and hard but, bringing the cow back at dusk, there was time to stop and chat with a neighbour, comparing the babies on their backs, planning for a wedding day, chaffing with a travelling tinker who sat mending their pots and kettles—always with plenty of noisy laughter. I judge a country and its people by how much laughter and singing I hear.
Ayicha’s rag rugs were quite often sold both to visitors and locals. On one occasion I took an American quartet up to Mohammed’s house for supper and one of the company admired the rag rug on the guest room floor, saying he thought the bright and glittering colours would look swell on his sunny ranch-house wall. Would I enquire about his buying it? I did and had to inform John that that particular rug had been made for the guest room and wasn’t for sale. But he wanted the rug and money talks after all. Mohammed kept refusing, however, and John’s constant asking was really a social faux pas. At one stage Mohammed rolled his eyes at me in a despairing gesture. I could only shrug. When John pestered our host to name his price Mohammed, seeing a way to end the conversation, quoted a figure about ten times the going price for such a rug.
“Done! Great!” was the instant response.
Mohammed’s face was a study. He shot me another look and it took some self-control not to burst out laughing. After the third glass of mint tea he began to roll up the rug and at that moment Ayicha came in to collect the tea tray.
“What are doing, dear?” came her startled query.
“Tell you later, dear,” whispered her red-faced husband.
His glance didn’t miss the quiver of a smile on my lips and his blush deepened. None of the others noted any of these undercurrents, I may add. We made our formal farewells and John bore off his trophy into the dark. As we wended homeward, down through the walnut trees, I could hear Ayicha’s voice screeching her displeasure at poor Mohammed: she was giving him hell.
One commercial venture at Imlil has stood out. Catching the eye, as one looks from Aït Idir’s terrace, is the old fort on the conical hill that dominates the valley and the view towards Toubkal. This was the old agadir or fortified granary where the locals would store their grain and treasured possessions in the bad old days of clan feuding and outside attack. As a one time caid’s base too it had been slowly crumbling away like a sand castle lapped by the tides of time, before being bought by an English company, Discover Ltd, to be turned into a field study centre and now classy hotel. The restoration was entirely the work of local labour, the result being beautiful in the extreme. For the grand opening they had a major celebration for all the nine high Mizane villages. A friend Jill and I had tea with Omar, the steward, the day before the opening. The women had baskets of chickens and one terrace had all the innards hung up to dry like washing.
We had to fly to the UK, alas, so missed the feast but later heard all about it. Prayers and readings from the Koran were made the day before by way of blessing. Two cooks were brought from Marrakech and all the villagers streamed in, dressed in their finery, chanting and singing as they came. They were given dates as the traditional welcome then feasted on chicken tagine, mint tea and cakes in one of the salons. As one group departed another would arrive. All the time the ladies sang and danced in the central tiled yard, a scene to assault eye, ear and nose. In the evening there was a feast of mechoui and more dancing into the night. The consumption was 900 loaves of bread, 152 chickens, 135 kg meat, 4 sheep, 4000 cakes, 100 kg sugar, 40 bundles of mint and 4 kg tea.
Martin Scorsese’s film about the Dalai Lama, Kundun, used the Kasbah du Toubkal for the monastery of Dungkar (to which the Dalai Lama fled). The rest of the filming was done at the Ouarzazate studios, Morocco’s answer to Hollywood. For filming, the kasbah was clad with fake stonework, wooden doors, Tibetan domes and prayer wheels. Three weeks were needed to set up the scene before 33 4 × 4s and 10 camions invaded Imlil and everything was carried up to the site. The location was covered in snow (Epsom salts) and the filming took just three days. The sun shone and snowy Toubkal as the backdrop was no fake. The last scene in the film, the Dalai Lama looking back to the panorama of the Himalayas, is the view of the Atlas from Asni.
A return to Imlil is like coming home. Apart from the CAF refuge, the guardian’s house across the road, and the bare space of the Parking I have seen every building go up and, as like as not, have known the builders, and probably ‘kent their faithers’ too. The heartbreak of the spate was still in the future as I returned from Marrakech to resume GTAM. I was so mobbed by local friends that I forgot to pay the camionette (pickup) driver so Bari, the tout of touts, gave him my fare and chased me up later. Bari is a lanky lad with the rubber face of the practised comic and is expert at selling souvenirs to visitors who’d no intention of buying them in the first place. “Berber credit” he grinned once at a victim: “Pay half now and the rest at once”. In all these situations I maintain strict neutrality. I warn parties of the practices and procedures but then leave them to it: if they want to pay idiot prices that is their affair. My sympathies are with Bari’s four children who rely on his selling skill for their daily bread.
At 1600 I bought fresh bread and headed for Mohammed’s house at Targa Imoula. Passing the school the kids grinned and called out “Bonjour, Hameesh”. Mohammed didn’t appear for hours but I ‘made the burnous sweat’ with a major unpacking and repacking from the stored bags, squeezing in a meal and a kaab el ghzal (gazelle’s horn pastry) with the family.
I’d done several hours of work before 0800 the next day so sneaked down through fields fluttering with a mock of magpies. I managed to creep close enough to see the sky-blue ‘eyebrow’ that distinguishes the Atlas species. I wrote letters in the Café Soleil and left trousers at the tailor’s for repairing. Mohammed brought over an English-speaking lad, another Hamish, who said he’d grown up in Scotland.
“Where?”
“Oh, you’ll never have heard of it.”
“Try me.”
“A wee place called Gartartan.”
I could only smile. “Two of our party live at Gartartan Lodge.”
There was also an Atlas connection for the drive from Gartartan Lodge led to ‘the big house’, once the home of Cunninghame Graham. His adventures in Morocco from a century ago are told in Maghreb al Acksa. We chatted over an extended lunch and I was about to head ‘home’ when Graeme arrived on a camionette, having traversed M’Goun, descended the gorges and enjoyed a quick visit to Essaouira since I’d last seen him. We had another round of coffee and were about to go when Ali also climbed down from a camionette, to be greeted by half of Imlil.
The fields were being ploughed and the maize planted for autumn harvesting. Autumn is a bad time for hiring mules as they are all working: walnut, apple and maize crops all follow hard on each other and the fields are then manured and sown with winter barley. The walnuts are harvested in a single week during which there’s a patter like rain throughout the valley as every tree is climbed and long poles are used to bang down the nuts. If timed correctly, the fruit hits the ground and the impact bursts off the outer fleshy covering. Contract labour, grannies, unemployed teenagers—all are pressed into this frantic harvesting.
This Mizane valley and Tachddirt’s Iminane meet just above Asni to form the Oued Reraiya which gives its name to the watershed-held tribe. In the Aït Mizane, the tribe is made of four clans: Aroumd (largest and most superior), the Aït Takhsin (Imlil), with the Mzik to west and the Aït Souka to east, the last newcomers after the original large Aït Takhsin village was swept away by a flood around 500 years ago. After that disaster, people radiated out to settle on the rim, like Targa Imoula, or above Imlil where the mosque tower stands. Haj Brahim donated the site for the first Imlil mosque, just a room opposite the refuge. Each clan is democratically run by its own jemaa (council) who arbitrate when needed with local problems, such as water distribution. All irrigation is made in turn and an example of natural cooperation is that Mzic villages can tap in to Imlil water if need be, in return for work in the fields or other services. Everyone helps others and can claim help in turn; this touiza is crofting by another name.
While we had been to Marrakech, the rest of our GTAM gang had gone over the Tizi n’ Likemt to camp by the azibs beyond (Azib Likemt, Azib Tifni) and had begun a high-level traverse from the Tizi n’ Tagharat to Toubkal where, if our timings worked, Ali and I could join them for a summit bivouac, something I’d wanted to do for years but had never hit the necessary benign conditions. (Toubkal, like many ‘highest’ summits is a notoriously fickle, cold and draughty place.) While they launched themselves on the traverse of Tichki (3753 m) and Afekoï (3755 m), the mules descended by Sidi Chamarouch to Imlil.
Hosain thought he’d be helpful and left most of the mule loads at Sidi Chamarouch to save carrying them up again. However, I wanted everything at Imlil for sorting out the gear into: needs for now; Neltner refuge; what was to be abandoned and what was needed for continuing GTAM. Taza and Tamri were to be rested while local mules could yo-yo up and down to the Neltner hut, now renamed Refuge du Toubkal (as the Lépiney is now Refuge Tazaghart). Louis Neltner and the Lépiney brothers were famous pre-war French climbers, part of a sort of Gallic Creag Dhu, who did much in the Alps. They were fortunate to work in Morocco awhile—as have the main explorers since, such as André Fougerolles, Roger Mailly and Michael Peyron, though they have been general wanderers rather than climbing specialists.
Graeme, Ali, Hamish G and I set off with four mules the following morning at the rather late hour of 0800. My legs were no longer itching but looked disgusting. We kept ahead of a French cavalcade of about thirty people and as many mules. We paused at Sidi Cham (where Hosain had stayed overnight), which gave me a sweaty hour to sort gear. We wanted some for the hut, some for the Phuds who were to be at the hut an extra night, and some to go down with Taza and Tamri, the latter to have an operation on his infected foot. Tamri demonstrated the hardiness of mules that night; he was laid on his back, bundled up like a parcel, while the inside of his hoof was scooped out and filled with cauterising pitch, yet a few days later he set off to trek to the Atlantic.
Sidi Chamarouch is a strange sort of place. In the 60s the hamlet didn’t exist apart from the sacred saint’s boulder, but this didn’t prevent the muleteers brewing in its shelter and sharing their tea with us. Now non-Moslems are not allowed over the bridge and small shops, stalls and rooms line the hillside, not to catch the mountain tourist (that’s a bonus) but the Moroccan pilgrims. There is a big annual moussem now to the marabout and the flood plain at Aroumd becomes spread with tents for this August festival with supplicants going up and down to the shrine or staying overnight. Nearly every marabout is regarded as worth visiting for women who cannot conceive, but this one also has powerful baraka for mental illnesses and cripples who may make the tough ascent on crutches. The atmosphere has something of Lourdes or Badrinath, only on a smaller scale. The site dates back to around 500 years ago. A mythical spirit Chamarouch visited Aroumd in a terrifying manifestation to indicate where he wanted his hundredth ‘house’ built (100 is a magical number). The shrine has been in the custodianship of an Aroumd family for centuries.
Graeme and Hamish G went on while I sorted out the food and followed with the two local mules, one of which would descend with Charles, Graeme and myself, the other with the Phuds a day later. We spotted snakes on the slabs overlooking the zigzags above the marabout but were too late in the season to see the snowmelt greens bright with gentians. The French crowd were camping, fortunately, with two caïdal pavilions and a dozen identical sleeping tents. I’d never seen that before and decided winter had much to recommend it, even if the hut can be a broiler house with bodies sleeping on or under the tables and meals being taken in shifts, the floor soaked with melted snow and the walls sweaty with condensation. (Now, there are two high-class mountain refuges.)
Being a landscape created by demolition teams and dumper trucks, I try to avoid the Toubkal Trail in summer. However splendid the setting, I’ve come to know it rather well over several decades but the highest summit had to be included on GTAM—not by the Tourist Route though. Toubkal is quite splendid really, as is the array of peaks on the other side of the valley—which is why the refuge, built in 1937–38, (3207 m) was likely to be overcrowded. There are two passes at the head of the valley. The Tizi n’ Ouagane (3750 m) drops to the Agoundis Valley and, with Ras (4083 m), Timesguida (4088 m) n’ Ouanoukrim (the highest local summits after Toubkal) and later the Tazaghart plateau all to the west, sweeps round to join the Oued Nfis at Ijoukak. The second pass beyond the Neltner, the Tizi n’ Ouanoums (3665 m), leads directly to the Lac d’Ifni which is, erroneously, often referred to as the only lake in the Atlas. (It is the only lake near Toubkal.)
Atlas weather in spring (when we are usually there) generally gives long spells of immaculate conditions with frontal upheavals in between. The fronts are often of text book creation, building up to snow and blow for a couple of days after which there’s a return to blue skies and afternoon clouds bubbling up out of the valleys. While once enjoying a bivouac at the lac, a front blew in so we packed up and headed for the Tizi n’ Ouanoums as fast as we could. Racing up in winter, with heavy packs, trying to beat both storm and darkness, was exhausting. High in this icy Cresta Run, Brian who was not experienced in winter mountaineering, gave a thick icicle a cheery whack with his ice axe. The icicle, thick as a tree trunk, broke off and went shooting down the fall-line of the gully, zipping like a toboggan. We could only yell a warning to the pair below. Luckily they heard us and stood aside to let the thunderbird pass. Brian was aghast but no harm had been done. The Neltner Hut was reached in the last of the daylight, the wind already swirling snow into the air as the blizzard began. One of the party was so exhausted at the supper table that he fell forward asleep and put his face down into his soup. This was only amusing later on; he was quite nastily scalded.
The Lac d’Ifni was first reached by Louis Gentil in 1924 after he’d been up Toubkal. A Segonzac party had ascended Iferouane in 1922 hoping it was the highest summit in Morocco but the ascent only confirmed that Toubkal was such so they decided to have a CAF ‘meet’ the following spring with Toubkal their objective. This was washed-out by bad weather, but in June (1923) Segonzac, Berger and Dolbeau made the successful raid. This spurred on rather than hindered explorations and all the Toubkal massif summits probably fell by the late 20s.
At the refuge I spent another hour sorting (food mostly) and at 1300 Graeme and I set off to climb the summit of all North Africa. I found this odd as normally I’m off before daybreak to crampon on frozen snow and enjoy the early sun at the top, and am back before the snow turns to porridge. Nobody else does this so we can always cook supper early, in peace, then be in bed when everyone else is fighting for meals. We like to rise to a sleeping hut, be off untrammelled and return to an empty hut. Early rising never worries me, especially when it makes life easier.
Two hanging valleys are held between the nearest enclosing arms of Toubkal’s ridges. The Ikhibi Sud is immediately above the hut and the Ikhibi Nord is slightly down-valley and, as a result, seldom taken though I’ve always considered it the much pleasanter way up. Before the Neltner Hut was built, the northern corrie was the tourist route. One then took mules from Asni to the refuge at Aroumd and set off from there so the nearer Ikhibi Nord was naturally followed. The ridges are generally ignored except the classic 1927 OSO Arête up from the Tizi n’ Ouanoums. This route was pioneered by Bentley Beetham, a prodigiously active British alpinist who grew tired of the Alps, found Morocco and made several visits to the Atlas. In the 60s we followed the jagged pink crest between the two ikhibis (valleys) and had a superb alpine traverse—and all of this lies on just one side of the mountain. There is quite a path up the Ikhibi Nord although this hasn’t the penal nature of the Ikhibi Sud. Once up the steep flank we stopped on the lip of the hanging valley for some lunch, enjoying the peace and quiet, shared with an emerging cluster of broken skeletons.
To explain these I’ll go back to April 1970. I’d been ill so headed off alone up Toubkal as a rest-cure. Two friends followed, to ski down. After ascending the Ikhibi Sud and sitting a full hour on top with a completely clear view, I went down the Ikhibi Nord. On the descent, I took in Immouzer (Toubkal NE, 4010 m), a Cuillin-like scramble with its own TD Gap. The next summit, Tibherine (3887 m) had an odd golden sheen to it which turned out to be the result of thousands of rounds of ammunition scattered down the slope. The summit cairn had been replaced by an aero engine and reeked of oil with all the smashed parts clean and fresh. Noseying about I found a pair of jeans still in their packaging, which I took to give to Aït Idir. There was a pack of biros too and I took a few working wheels and cogs for souvenirs. When I almost cramponed onto a smashed box of high explosives wedged in the rocks my nerve rather failed and I picked a canny way off, before tobogganing well down the corrie on a bit of fuselage. In the hut there was a Moroccan family up for the skiing, and I gave the boys most of my souvenirs as I’d weight enough for skiing down to Sidi Chamarouch the next day. We flew home a few days later.
Reading the ABMSAC Journal many months later, I came on a note from a party who had been refused access above Imlil in April because there was a big search on for an aircraft which had crashed, while flying arms to Biafra. By chance, the next visit, I met the same Moroccan family of skiers. They had still been at the Neltner when the military arrived and sent them down. I’d never given a thought to the crash not being known about (after all, it’s not the sort of thing one stumbles on very often) so was quite glad to have got away before all the hassle. I’m just relieved I didn’t stumble on any of the six crew. They were carried down and buried on the lip of the Ikhibi Nord, but began to surface again a few years later. A doctor in one of our parties pointed out obvious signs of impact injuries to some of the bones.
For the first time ever we met a few people descending the Ikhibi Nord as we climbed up. They no doubt wondered what on earth we were doing heading up so late in the day, without even rucksacks. (Porters were carrying them up the Ikhibi Sud.) We did have large Sigg waterbottles and some empty Sidi Ali bottles which were filled at the last likely water source and we enjoyed scrambling up the stream bed and wending about to look at the scattered wreckage so we landed on Tibherine very quickly. We didn’t linger long, as I’d like to have done, as there was a strong wind with a considerable chill factor. We looked down and along the secret corrie to Afekoï. Somewhere down there (Tizi n’ Immouzer) the others presumably bivouacked the night before. (Later they reported an enjoyable traverse of the peaks and a good high bivouac as there were plenty of snow banks providing meltwater.)
From most viewpoints, Afekoï is a perfect cone in the lee of Toubkal (first climbed in 1927, by A. Rand Herron), and for a long time the peak was the only distinctive summit in the massif I’d not climbed, largely because we were winter-into-spring visitors and the corrie approach had barring bands of ice-draped cliffs. However, a few years back one late spring, I’d scrambled up the crags south of the corrie and cut in above the rock bands, all a bit hairy with a heavy rucksack, but the reward was great for I found a well-watered secret place and Afekoï gave a delightful scramble on a day fresh as Creation. In the back of the corrie lay a wheel and other sizeable pieces of wreckage, hundreds of metres below Tibherine: it was as if a plane had crashed on Scafell and wreckage lay by the shores of Wastwater and by the River Esk on opposite sides of the peak. I bivouacked by a large waterfall in the centre of the sunset cliffs.
The gentle slopes over from Tibherine to the final upthrust of the Toubkal peak are stony yet quite a few alpine flowers thrive in that hostile place. These include a minute pansy (Viola dyris), the whole flower face just quarter the size of a pinkie nail and Linaria tristis which has a deep tap root to cope with the shifting screes but is very difficult to keep going in Britain where we just can’t reproduce either the natural setting or the climate. There are a few species of alpines growing within spitting distance of the trig point on Toubkal; a draba (D. Oreadum) actually grew on the cairn.
Our GTAM ascent of the final ridge had an element of the farcical as the wind really caught us. Loose and ‘scraggy’ (terrain which is part crag, part scree) the climb needed care yet we were constantly buffeted off balance, feet falling wide of where we aimed. I’d about three litres of bottled water in a carrier bag over a shoulder and at one gust these were lifted by the wind and thrown onto my chest. The bag tore and everything went flying. My treasured straw hat flew up on a Cook’s tour of the northeast flank of Toubkal and then dropped to the ground at my feet again. The plastic bag spiralled around a huge circuit with the speed and abandon of a crag martin before soaring up and away out of sight. One Sidi Ali bottle had cracked on the rocks at the neck, so I had to carry it in my hand which then froze with the cold, despite the sun still shining. There were plenty of lenticular clouds and the summit was too obviously thrusting up into a jet stream of wind.
Unsurprisingly, Charles and the Phuds party were not esconced at the summit. Ali was, however, and pitched inside the circle of stones near the big metal marker was a maroon Micro! A tent there seemed preposterous but made staying possible. Bivouac bags alone would have been beyond endurance, a hungry survival exercise at best, but with a tent—well, we could try. Ali was meant to have come up the Ikhibi Nord after us but instead went up with the two porters helping with our sacks and taking the Vango tent rather than bivvy bags. They also took a 5-litre container of water. The party met Charles and the others descending to the hut, all idea of a bivouac with their lightweight gear sensibly abandoned. Charles and I had once before carried up bivvy gear, on ski, to Toubkal’s summit and had three hours on top until suddenly the clouds boiled up and snow began to fall. We decided not to bivvy after all, made some tea and skied down to the hut through the rising blizzard. The change from clear sky to driving snow took less than an hour.
We crowded into Ali’s summit tent for a brew first then, with Lightning jacket, over-trousers and head wrapped in a shen, I had a look about—briefly. The dream of lolling in the sun to watch the world spin calmly into night was banished. The sunset colours were fierce reds and blacks and bruised blues, the beaten sun scuttling for cover. The cold was remarkable; my big toes began to freeze. Without gloves one could only bare hands for seconds. The most ludicrous pantomime was performed before finally bedding down when we had to dress in full armour just to go out for a pee. We could see the lights of Marrakech on one side and Ouarzazate on the other, as magical a moment as any on the trip. The clouds scudded across a three-quarter moon.
It says a lot for the tent that we felt completely confident about surviving. Any tent I’d owned previously would have rattled and banged all through the night, whereas the Micro was steady and quiet. It was a squash with three of us; Graeme was pushed to the back while I sat in the entrance with Ali in the middle. Ali and I made a good soup and then a simplified hoosh of meat, vegetables and Smash, with brews and biscuits to follow—exactly the meal we’d have had if we’d been lolling about on the balmy night one might have expected on 16th June. I was half out of the inner tent for sleeping, but far from cold on my Therm-a-Rest, inside the Snugpak bag and wearing thermals. A combination of excitement, being too warm and a slight headache made for a wakeful night but I wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world. Everyone should do something a bit special at least once in a lifetime, something needing both imagination and application.
In reality it was a wild night with about the worst wind I’ve camped in but even at the time the experience was sublimated into romance. Graeme’s bladder led to a communal chaos at 0200, leaving three weary hours until dawn when I was glad to get busy. Brews, cornflakes, bread and jam and we were off; the biting-cold dawn being very much like the previous day’s end, as if some economy of nature had simply put the movie into reverse. Yet, for Ali and me, there was a particular joy in gazing west. Practically all the GTAM still to accomplish lay in view, right to the ragged crest of the ‘Ridge of a Hundred Peaks’ leading to Jbel Tinergwet. Seeing the end on the skyline was a shock as what would come after had never intruded our thoughts during the weeks of wandering. I didn’t want to think about such realities. East, the way led the eye along by Iferouane and Taska n’ Zat to the Tizi n’ Tichka peaks and beyond.
GTAM was a bit like a relay, for when one group had walked from an eastern horizon to wherever, the next group would go from there to the western horizon; horizon to horizon taking a month or so. Graeme, with Tony a few days later, would travel to Tinergwet and beyond and, when they left, we would have three days’ tramping to Tamri and the sea. There can’t be many years when I’ve not climbed my old friend Toubkal.
“All downhill now”, I joked.