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Trek within the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco
What exactly is it love walking in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco? In June 2010 a group of us discovered once we did a 7 day trek from Imlil with one of Toubkal-Trekking.com guides, whose name is Jamal. It had been our first connection with a "guided trek" and we didn't have regrets at the conclusion.
To begin with, we connect with the team which is made up of the guide, a cook, and mules and muleteers. The mules do the work of carrying the camping equipment, a lot of the food needed for the trek and our heavy luggage, preferably packed in the rucksack. Believe it or not, they'll use only female mules as their temperament is best suited to the work. They start working together with light loads around one year and have a working lifetime of 27 - Thirty years. Good mules could cost around 950 and can carry approximately 140kg.
Accommodation on the trek varied from camping, refuges or remaining in a Berber village house. The camp sites were often idyllic, usually by the side of your stream or river - perfect for summer swimming - and included a dining tent which provided protection from heat of the sun as well as in the evening shelter in the cold as well as occasional rain. In June, once we learned, will still be cold during the night even as camped above 2,000m.
We stayed per night in the Toubkal refuge which at 3207m is about 1000m beneath the summit of Toubkal (4167m) This is a large, modern refuge with dormitories of varying sizes, good showers plus a large communal area with roaring fire - essential once we found its way to a snow storm! Our food here was still prepared by our cook, though we might also buy snacks from your refuge shop. There are stunning views from your refuge up for the Toubkal summit and back the valley.
One night we stayed inside a Berber village house in Amsouzerte Village. This village, like many on the trek, does not have any electricity, so lighting and heating (for the showers) was by bottled gas. Again our food was served by our personal cook - a tasty chicken tajine - the chicken being bought inside the village. Incidentally, it is easy to find the villages with electricity as just about any house includes a large white satellite dish on the flat roof, clearly visible while you approach the village.
On another occasion, due to bad weather Jamal arranged for us to sleep in a pilgrims' hostel on the shrine of Sidi Chamarouch. It was a strange experience since the shrine attracts many pilgrims who arrive by walking or mule and stay the evening. The shrine itself is barred to non-Muslims, but fortunately the hostel just isn't! Here as always we slept on the floor on comfortable sleeping mats which the mules carried. We simply necessary to provide our very own sleeping-bags - and we were glad we had brought warm ones. At altitude it is always cold through the night. Sidi Chamarouch, due to the pilgrims and trekkers who pass through, is full of small stalls and shops selling snacks, sodas and souvenirs. It absolutely was almost surreal following your barrenness on most of the trek.
high atlas mountains trek
Our three mules carried our food that was supplemented with fresh produce, particularly eggs, fresh bread and meat, bought inside the villages on the way, even though there aren't shops to be sure them in the High Atlas villages. All the food was cooked by Lahcen, our cook. Unlike Jamal who spoke excellent and colloquial English, the muleteers spoke no English in support of Lahcen spoke some French.
Breakfast was a young meal and was comprised of a fashionable drink (tea, coffee with dried milk), bread, jam, chocolate and cheese spreads and honey. This is enough to manage at 6.30 in the morning! Then we trigger for that morning's trek.
After our departure the muleteers packed everything up, loaded the mules and would overtake us about the trail and stay prepared to welcome us, around midday, with mint tea then a freshly prepared picnic lunch - detailed with blankets to sit down on! Lunch would be a cold buffet, typically pasta, sardines (Morocco is really a major world producer), tuna and salad, and also - Lahcen's speciality - a warm dish of potato, tomato and chick peas or perhaps a Moroccan omelette.
When we finished our day's walk, usually mid afternoon, i was always offered mint tea. By the end of the trek our initial enthusiasm for mint tea had waned! We then had time to unwind, explore or talk, often with Jamal concerning the Berber way of life. The evening meal was usually soup plus a meat or vegetable tajine prepared from your basic ingredients (potatoes and carrots were peeled through the cooks) and cooked very efficiently over a small gas stove. Whenever you can there was berry (melon, oranges). No alcohol though, if you don't sneak some along with you.
The majority of the walking we did was along narrow stony tracks, sometimes very faint and rarely waymarked. With no guide it might are already super easy to acquire lost - yet we might meet young kids herding goats in remote valleys or on high peaks, miles through the village. One time a new boy aged about 14 saw us from his village within the valley at risk of a pass at 3,500m together climbed up over 1000m to satisfy us at the top. Once we arrived at a biting wind at the summit he previously beaten us and hang up up in a row the six bottles of Coke he had carried track of him that she hoped we would buy. We did but higher productivity of admiration for his toughness and entrepreneurial spirit than desire to have a fizzy drink. He packed away the empties and hang off again down the valley as part of his Wellingtons.
Once we approached the villages we had the small cultivated fields, with crops of potatoes, maize, tomatoes and oats and wheat. Inside the fertile valleys were orchards of cherry, walnut and apple. Young kids were herding goats or travelling to school, women were carrying heavy bundles of fodder cut from the fields for that cattle, men were tilling the fields. If we saw an enormous tipper lorry carrying about forty workers returning to their villages. Piece by piece the standard Berber life-style is beginning to change as tracks are widened and turn into passable to trucks, holes are prepared for electricity pylons plus more villages are connected to a mains supply.
But June remains the time of the transhumance for most in high altitude, the moving up of whole villages in the valleys to the high summer pastures. We had empty villages being ready for summer occupation. They were encompassed by mountain pastures and extensive, old networks of irrigation ditches. One shepherd we met was wondering where all others was: he previously apparently trigger weekly or so too quickly and it was now needing to return down the valley!
We carried only day packs so that as we knew we might get closer the mules again at lunchtime, we carried only essential items: water (purified stream water), snacks (brought with us from England) and additional clothing as possible very cold at altitude. Walking poles are extremely useful and good boots essential for certainly not a day trek from Imlil. The walking is simple enough and Jamal ensured that people maintained a leisurely pace, allowing the required time for stops, photo opportunities and scenery gazing. Younger crowd took pride and pleasure in trying to explain to us the Berber way of life. We learned a lot regarding language, culture, religion, agriculture, family life - and mules! We found that the indigenous fauna from the area includes foxes, rabbits, wild goats and squirrel, but were assured that it is freezing for snakes and scorpions - no less than once we have there been!
Many of us suffered to some degree with altitude sickness during the first couple of days. We had been glad that by the time we reached the Toubkal refuge we'd acclimatised, helped by daily climbs over passes of more than 3000m by camping at altitude. In the refuge we met another party of walkers who had walked up from Imlil in one day, a height gain of approximately 1500m. They were not experienced or very fit and were suffering with sore feet and altitude sickness. They meant to climb Toubkal the next morning, but as we discovered, they were not fit or well enough and had to descend.
