The mythical hero Fionn once asked his sons what they considered the greatest music of all. One replied that it was the clash of swords in battle, the second that it was the baying of hounds on the chase, the third that it was the sound of the harp in the great hall. Their father shook his head and answered his own question, “No, my sons, the greatest music of all is what is happening”.
Irish traditional
John Willison and Clare Wardle went through the Toubkal massif by the Ourika Valley, the Kissaria gorges, Lac d’ Ifni, Jbel Toubkal by the OSO Arête (Clare’s first rock climb!), and the lovely Agoundis Valley. They then hitched to the top of the Tizi n’ Test and descended to the Nfis valley from the crest further west only to have a bit of an epic. In comparison, we took the wimp’s way.
Toubkal’s Ikhibi Sud is unhappily worn by passing feet so from the summit we chose to descend the Ikhibi Nord again; besides, I wanted Ali to see the wreckage on Tibherine. On the screes below Tibherine we met Hamish G plodding up so told him about the crash. He’d not noticed the bones! Our gang were all round the table in the hut, not setting off until noon. Graeme and I had a siesta and slept well that night despite the multi-lingual din. The whisky was flowing when we went to bed, which only partly explained Charles, Graeme and I being up long before the others despite their intentions of climbing Ras and Timesguida that day.
We ambled down for Mohammed’s with a pause for tea at Sidi Chamarouch, then met the restless Hosain coming up the track on Taza. I led the others off along the seguia circling Aroumd to enjoy the flowers (orchids a metre high) and then, below the village, along to the flat-topped boulder perch where one can see a hidden cascade up a side valley.
Lying on that boulder alone, a fox once came right up to within a couple of metres of me before he caught my scent. He then did an instant back somersault and vanished among the walnut terraces. On another occasion, I’d once watched a dog and vixen nosing their way across the screes without noticing me at all. But I saw quite the strangest creature I’ve ever seen in Morocco off the Aroumd road. I had a favourite reading spot there, and was quietly doing that when a furry creature popped out of the rock near my feet. It looked like a big fat mouse but had a ridiculously elongated nose: for all the world like a miniature elephant’s trunk. The creature approached my legs and raced back under the rock several times and then, as if deciding I was just a new part of the scenery rather than any threat, shot up my front and over a shoulder to disappear into a rock behind. I was probably sitting on its regular run. Nobody recognised my drawing of the ‘mouse’ and in the end I sent my drawings and descriptions to the Natural History Museum and they kindly sent back a description of the North African elephant shrew (Elephantulus rozeti). So there is a mouse with an elephant’s trunk, but Mohammed doesn’t believe it.
From the boulder perch, always a good pause heading home, we followed the seguia from the cascade stream all the way home to Targa Imoula. (Targa is Berber for a water channel, seguia is the Arabic word.) After a bit of repacking, we went down to the Café Soleil for an omelette lunch. Both Charles and I did a huge washing of clothes then scrubbed ourselves too, creating a semi-hammam in the tiled room. While we had a fairly easy attitude to the dust and dirt of the trail, any chance of being thoroughly clean was welcomed. The next hot shower would be nearing the coast, almost the finish. The ‘end’ kept intruding as we thought ahead and prepared for the trail once more. Ali, Hosain and Chris H appeared so we hurried on our efforts in case the rest arrived as well. We wanted both space and peace that day.
I’d made a harrira at dusk and, later, we were called up for a tagine, oranges and tea on the balcony and Graeme and I talked music until we were dopey with sleep. Graeme was the youngest involved in GTAM. He had already done a great deal in the Atlas (and all over the place), having quit working on the railways of Britain. Lean, fit and with many interests he reminded me of my own vanished youth when I too could take on the locals in running down from the Neltner. Dark and swarthy, Graeme was often taken for a local (useful sometimes) and he and Ali could have passed as brothers.
At Imlil we were being joined by a French woman whom I will call Monique. She had married an Englishman and lived in Rabat. I’d met her a few times and we shared an interest in the cultural and artistic world of Morocco. She had previously wandered in the Atlas so it felt reasonable to suggest she came along for a while, perhaps as far as the Tichka Plateau.
While we enjoyed the Café Soleil Graeme went off to Marrakech to link up with Tony, newly arrived. After a big shopping they would join us at Ijoukak, the last such addition of GTAM, a few days after we left Imlil. From Imlil to the sea was a major undertaking in itself and, once on the way, was absorbing enough that we lived entirely in it. ‘La distance n’y fait rien; il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte’ (The distance is immaterial, its only the first steps that matters) applied now as it had at Taza. One of the joys of such journeying is its enveloping demands that quite shut out other, exterior, matters. Hamish G blew in from the Neltner, having left the others just getting up. He and Graeme departed in a camionette. Later, trinket-seller Bari called me in to his stall for tea. He was doing quite well out of our gang.
A mule ran amok on the square, kicking out at cars and charging about wildly until someone was able to grab the flying rope halter. On the way up to Targa Imoula we looked in to inspect the new gîte Mohammed was building in the fields above the school; the view from the rooftop was a complete encompassing of the Imlil basin: all the circling peaks and radial valleys. The fields were all brown (planted with maize) compared to the previous week when they had been golden with grain. The cherry season, alas, was over. The Phuds were determinedly finishing off their remaining Duty Free booze and insisted on dancing on the terrace, a rather limp jollity. Mohammed took off the Marmite jar for the supper cous cous preparations. There was the porridgy-like soup first, a really good cous cous, the last cherries of the season and plenty of excellent mint tea, all consumed on the upper terrace under the stars. ‘And so to bed.’ (Did you know Samuel Pepys visited Morocco?) The sky was like black glass and the stars like Christmas lights down Oxford Street. A small cool breeze fluttered in the grilled window and I lay listening to the gentle noises of the night, relishing the thought of being on the way again.
Upstairs I could hear the less than happy complaints of Mustapha. He was Mohammed’s firstborn and, as such, was the apple of his eye, as delightful and lively a lad as ever ran the slopes of Atlas. By the age of eight he was contributing quite effectively to the family finances, leading mules and generally the firm’s ‘gofor’. Tragically, he was struck down by some cerebral bug which had taken away his strength so he now sat in a crumpled heap in a corner, unable to walk or even talk properly. It was heart-rending and no less so because of the stony acceptance of misfortune.
At an early hour I was woken from my grateful sleep with the repeated phrase: “Pleased to meet you, Jimmy” coming in through the window grill. The voice was that of the local house bunting (Emberiza striolata) and during all the years we’d stayed at Mohammed’s that refrain had been our reveille. It indicated that the song was passed down through successive generations for it was a version of the song unique to Targa Imoula. The local name of the bird is the onomatopoeic teebeebit which perhaps covers the three-noted callers. Many, if not most, give four notes and once the rasping “Pleased to meet you” is suggested it is hard to hear anything else. The bird is common and not harmed (not even in the grain souks) as, like the stork or swallow it is regarded as bringing good luck. A legend tells of the Prophet Mohammed waking to the bird repeating, over and over, the phrase “One month is enough, one month is enough” and this he took to be the answer to the matter he’d been considering: the duration of the fast now known as Ramadan.
Our tallest member was unusually silent over breakfast for he had charged into the guest room without allowing for the five foot eight lintel. You can tell the seasoned Atlas travellers: they are the ones who, at every village door, however high, give a sort of jerky bow on entering.
There was a general exodus after breakfast with Mohammed’s mule taking the others’ gear down to the car park for transporting to Marrakech. We met Monique and our cavalcade, still with the likeable muleteers Mohammed and young Omar and headed off for the Tizi Mzic, the western dominating pass. The ascent to the Tizi Mzic (2489 m) was hot work as usual and we buckled down to the slog: “One leg in front of the other, One leg in front of the other, As the little dog said”.
From near the elbow in the Aroumd piste the current mule track traverses above the cultivation level and then thankfully reaches a shady walnut grove. It then heads up the streambed, leaving the stream to pass some azibs by a side stream, beyond which stunted juniper woods mark the final zigzags to the pass. Barbary partridge, great tit, redstart, green woodpecker and crimson-winged finch are birds seen from the path, bird-spotting being a useful excuse for stopping when in need of a rest. The air was snappy with the scent of the juniper. We met a solitary wanderer singing down the way and had a second breakfast on the col, a place made for lingering with balanced views. East, it was all gentle tones with Angour like a foresight beyond the gunbarrel Tizi n’ Tamatert glen; west, we could see the forested foothills below the vast plateau of Tazaghart. The possible continuations from the tizi are like the introductory moves of a chess game, apparently few and simple but, before long, the options of the game are endless.
Below, on the west side, lay Tizi Oussem (a village not a pass) and from it the Azzadene valley runs down to the Oued Nfis at Ouirgane on the Tizi n’ Test road. At Ouirgane was the Au Sanglier Qui Fume, an auberge of character long run by Madame Thevenin, a Flemish larger than life character who only left the hills when illness forced her. She dined with the guests, French style, and bullied everyone in loud tones. The staff remained the same for decades. Even when her husband died she stayed on. She loved flowers and the whole establishment was overgrown with scented wisteria. We knew she was not returning when the sunflower painting signed by a child ‘pour mama’ vanished from the walls. The 1995 spate broke the bridge on the main road, filled rooms of the Au Sanglier with mud, wrecked part of the garden and swept away the stables (and stallions) where the national trick riding team practised across the river. I’m glad madame did not live to witness that heartbreaking scene. The smoking boar still adorns one wall and happily, now, madame’s family run the hotel.
Turning up from Tizi Oussem (or Tizi Mzic direct) leads to the azibs of Tamsoult (2540 m) and a floral gorge with a spectacular track up to the isolated 3000 m Tazaghart (Lépiney) refuge. In winter, an ice axe may be needed just to reach the hut! Tazaghart is Ben Nevis writ large: miles of ridges and gullies topped by a huge stony plateau. The 600 m wall of the Clochetons overhangs the hut and facing the Tazaghart cliffs are gullies and ridges galore. The Couloir de Neige often survives, ice-filled, for years on end but all our attempts on it have ended with flight as the gully is a natural stone shoot. Some of the 4000-ers are accessible from the Tizi Melloul at the head of the glen, but that approach is defended by an icefall.
The hut guardian lives at Tizi Oussem. In the early years we sat out a couple of ferocious storms at the refuge, with the hut creaking and groaning like a wooden sailing ship and our minds dwelling on the nearby wreckage where an earlier hut had been swept away by an avalanche. We made several ascents of Tazaghart both for the climbing itself and for the atmosphere of the summit plateau, which can’t be described any better than in the words of Dresch and de Lépiney in 1938: ‘un désert de pierres, plat, nu, vide, si haut perché qu’ on n’ aperçoit rien sous le ciel; il constitue un des spectacles le plus saissants de l’Atlas’ (a desert of stones, flat, bare, vast, perched so high that one can see nothing but sky; it forms one of the most striking spectacles in the Atlas). From the Azib Tamsoult (a good camping area) you can also circle Adrar Adj (Haj), the nearest 3000 m summit to Imlil (3129 m), a worthy climb and with views of all the great peaks. Winter often covers the summit of the peak with snow. Returning pilgrims from Mecca often wear white turbans, hence the name.
None of these routes were ours on GTAM as we held resolutely westwards, quite against the grain of the land. We allowed three days to trek through to Ijoukak on the Tizi n’ Test road, a route which had already become a great favourite of mine. We were able to ‘float’ up and down slopes now, distance meaningless, slipping into the restfulness of resumed routine, a friendly fitness. A path dropped brutally to Tizi Oussem but we preferred to skirt left and descend gentler slopes through the juniper forest, on a path which was not too easy to follow among the trees. It zigzagged down towards an obvious graveyard kouba on a spur above Tizi Oussem, a very confusing village, built on top of itself as if thrown down the hillside.
We knew to double back on the fringe of Tizi Oussem and angled down to the river. After working our way up the Oued Azzadene, we turned off on a good track into Tizi Ouarhou (a village) where several terrace fields were growing irises, not just as a soil-holding margin but for dye and cosmetic use. There was a steep climb before we angled in to the riverside where we sat, feet in the cool water, for our picnic lunch. The stream was overlaid with the textured white of water crowfoot. There were several species of butterfly about and one innocently landed on a twig beside me only for a spider to rush out and grab it. The arachnid bit its victim whose wings soon stopped beating, presumably from a disabling poison. By then the spider had thoroughly parcelled up the butterfly in a shroud of spun threads. As a final gesture, the beast cut off the butterfly’s wings which spiralled down into the stream and were carried away one by one. Monique was not happy about this performance.
We wended off and erroneously took a path up instead of crossing the stream (as we soon saw the mules doing) so had to traverse poor grazing tracks until we met the mule track again on our side. I stood on an apparently safe boulder only for it to turn under me, so I crashed down onto my right shoulder rather painfully. The shoulder seemed to be fine but over the months gave recurring trouble and a full year passed before it recovered completely. I was afraid I’d not be able to paddle a canoe, but several Highland trips passed uneventfully. Knees and thigh joints are also beginning to creak but most people our age, Charles pointed out, are using their free bus passes, not cavorting over trackless mountains. We have reached that certain age where we make comments about ‘old’ people only to discover they are younger than we are.
The mule track zigzagged up and ran on, dominated by the flank of Tazaghart, to reach a secret spring-fed green corner where the grass was starred by globe thistles. The track on was also rather furtive for it ran up bare strata in the rocks, easily overlooked, to wend through a knobbly area where the junipers gradually petered out. Ahead, we could see the cook tent and the mules grazing, tethered to our ice axes, banged in the length of their shafts. There was instant tea when we arrived. They were an efficient local team (the lads had been with us since Setti Fadma) and nothing was urgently calling for attention. We didn’t even bother erecting our tents, but made scrapes on the gritty scree across the stream and used our bivvy bags. Hosain, hyperactive as ever, began supper early. Old Mohammed was being ribbed over the purchase of new canvas boots at Imlil: he’d been sold two left feet. As a result he’d crossed one pass and almost climbed another in flipflops. I worked on my book in bed and, as ever, found working out the next chapter a sure way of getting to sleep quickly.
In the night a wind blew up out of nowhere, a booming, gusty wind and, too late, I realised I’d left my mug perched on a stone. It had gone. This was annoying as the mug had sentimental value—I’d brought it up from the well at Asni youth hostel. There was a spell of seven years when there was no water on tap and so was drawn from the well by a bucket, and one day I brought up a red mug in the bucket. Now the wind had taken it—a bit Omar Khayyám-ish, coming by water and going by wind. Willy-nilly the wind went on blowing, so breakfast porridge had a sugaring of dark dust. Omar forgot all about snakes: the type of bushes on those slopes were supposed to be popular with a nasty species, hence our scrapes had all been on the open, bare screes. (Monique considered this spartan site a poor second to any house.) One of Charles’s socks was found a good 100 metres down valley and other mugs and plates were well distributed. The slopes above led to a final gravelly tussle to reach the Tizi n’ Ouarhou (Tizi n’ Tougdal, 2672 m). The view back the previous night had been blue on blues, that day’s colours were graceful greys, ridge on ridge.
Past experience helped to navigate the complex fields and we cut corners across to the main path up from Tisgui. Animals were streaming out of the village, highlighted against the crude variegated tones of strata. Girls rode mules with the metal ‘panniers’ used to collect wood and headed up a side valley towards stunted trees. We had a good long break in a shady nook before joining the grand highway, still traversing the sprawl of Tazaghart, an undulating track with plenty of indentations to cross streams descending from the high plateau snows. The Tizi n’ Iguidi ahead was dominated by a strata-marked cone of hill, balanced on the left by a rocky peak which would bear a rock-climbing visitation. I let the others walk on to photograph them with that background, then just couldn’t catch up again when I suddenly felt weak and queasy for no obvious reason.
Our destination was the last water before the zigzags up to the Tizi n’ Iguidi, a pleasant corner except all the grassy bits had water seeping onto them and each of the many young walnut trees was being carefully fed by a trickle of directed water. Admiration for this horticultural application was rather lost on those wanting places for tents. I lay in the temporary shade of a boulder. Kind Mohammed brought me tea and Ali helped pitch my tent in the blustery wind. Rising from the ground my knees felt feeble and my right arm was useless. I felt about a hundred years old and I needed all my resolution to go and wash socks and feet and cream my spotty legs. I then slept in the shade of a walnut tree (one not standing in water) until supper was ready, not that I ate more than some bread and jam. After drinking plenty of liquid, I retreated to bed with a cocktail of pills—the thermometer in the tent read 100°F (40°C). In the morning I was fine. As earlier waters had drained to Tisgui these ran to the village of Ameslane, to which the Imlil pair descended for new shoes for the mules. Ali suggested Mohammed might buy new shoes too, a pair if possible, or two right ones.
The dawn sky went through the usual parade of opal to amber to turquoise to butterfly blue. Being off efficiently and regularly was a pleasant reversion. The slopes were still surfing with wind but our high camping meant an easy climb to the Tizi n’ Iguidi about 2500 m. We descended a slope where the path sometimes barely marked the bulges of compacted shale and in others went skittering down loose chips that tinkled with metallic sounds underfoot. Humans and mules had a scree run. An old man with a donkey laden with wood asked me for a bonbon, Charles for a stilo (biro) and Ali for a garro (cigarette). We waited for the mules under some huge walnuts by a gushing stream, a site to camp at some day. We didn’t have much useful shade thereafter and endured a throbbing day. Much of the country in the following few days was to have severe and damaging storms, but the Western Atlas escaped.
With such an abundance of water, the valley was well cultivated and we followed a seguia through the fields, crossed a jagged limestone area to reach the first village, Aït Zitoun. A path lead to the Tizi n’ Test road, from where Ijoukak lies an hour’s walk on. However, having gone that way several times and disliking tarred roads, we decided to cut over the hills to descend directly to Ijoukak. The route looked easy enough on the map.
We were directed and accompanied down to the river, but then took some tentative wanderings to find a way to Tazgalt. We chatted with a schools’ attendance officer, home on holiday from Casablanca, who put us on the right road again. Once clear of the village we had oatcakes and Kiri cheese under a coppice of almonds. We could see the blue dots of our cavalcade wending down for the main road, and it was tempting to do likewise.
An orange and some drinks made the hot ascent bearable—just—and apart from the soil colours changing, the path just went on and on before steepening for a last red soil section. Suddenly, there was the Oued Nfis far below. In the aching heat it was too hazy even to pick out the historic site of Tinmal, but the Oued Nfis was our guide to the Tichka Plateau, the Ridge and the end.
Cutting in at Ijoukak was the Oued Agoundis (rising near Toubkal) with its zinc and lead mines. I wended over a strange plateau-like hollow to a gap in cliffs, from where a piste sphaghettied down to Ijoukak. A mule track, harsh and hard on the feet, descended more directly, criss-crossed by the piste. The day was desperately hot, I’d no water left but at least progression was downhill. When there isn’t any alternative but to go on, it is surprising how one does just that. Ijoukak had a sea-green mosque tower with what looked like a rocket perched on top. I skipped a paddle in the river in favour of drinking three cocas in a row and then joined Graeme, Tony and Chris B for tea in the coolest room of our auberge. “Mzien!” the muleteers kept saying (“Excellent!”) We agreed.
Graeme and Tony had met up at the Hotel Ali in Marrakech as planned, did most of the shopping at the handy grocery by the back door (there’s a bakery by the front door) and brought everything to Ijoukak by taxi, negotiated at the Bab er Rob. The driver not only had to obtain the statutory police chit for the unscheduled journey, but he went home to obtain clearance from his wife! Chris Bond had brought out his cycle and stayed on after the Phuds left to make a cycle tour on his own. He’d cycled up from Asni that day, knowing we’d be at Ijoukak. Monique was off on her own. I’m afraid she had little in common with our trail-hardened party of individuals and, while we pulled together with common purpose, Monique seemed to live in a different world. We’d squabbled with her over her paying people to pose for photographs, as any doling out of dirhams soon leads to endemic begging. The remote Western Atlas was still free of this distraction and we wanted to keep it that way.
Utilitarian Ijoukak is only a row of hanuts and cafés and a closed-up colonial period refuge where the Oued Agoundis flows into the Oued Nfis. The buses crossing the Tizi n’ Test stop there for breakfast taghboula (porridge), tea or tagines, scoffed at any time of the day. The westernmost café was our home for the night, as unpretentious as the rest but with attractive rooms and enclosed yards hidden behind. They did excellent tagines too. Tagines are invariably slow-cooked and not planned in advance so making one’s needs known early is advisable. The cook will use what ingredients can be found readily which ensures no two tagines are ever the same. Likewise every household bakes its own bread, to its own recipe, which ensures a pleasing variety.
On a previous Flowers trip down the Nfis we stayed there too and, from the roof, watched the Aïd el Kebir harma (goat man) chasing the children up the street with a stick and much yelling. The figure looked like an anorexic gorilla. Once home from GTAM a friend showed me a brochure for holidaying in the Swiss Lötschental, which portrayed an ancient custom of figures dressing in skins. They looked extraordinarily like the Atlas goat men and I wondered if they had a common ancestry back in prehistory. Depending on the size of the village, chosen young adults dress up in the skins: the goat men. Like Ramadan, this is a moveable feast and if it occurs in high summer, one is advised to stand up-wind of the goat men after day one. Oddly, we had not seen any goat men at Tarbat where we’d celebrated the feast.
As the transport licensing laws are relaxed for the festive period, everything on wheels is on the road crowded with family and friends, webbing the country with chaos. We counted 27 minibuses at Ijoukak, all packed, many with a beast or two perched on top of the piles of baggage. It was good to be back although we were also aware that was the beginning of the final stage of GTAM. It was not one to be underestimated however, as several major 3000 m summits line the Western Atlas.