The trip started off with a pair of flights on Icelandair – one from Chicago to Reykjavik and then another from Reykjavik to Paris where I’d spend a couple nights and meet up with a buddy of mine before flying down to Morocco together to do a week of hiking in the Atlas Mountains. Here we are in front of the Cathedral de Notre-Dame
After the two nights in Paris during which I’d stayed in the spare bedroom at my buddy Philippe’s apartment, we took a morning flight to Marrakech on some low-cost Dutch carrier called Transavia. The ride from the airport to the old city – or the medina, as it’s called – probably took somewhere around twenty minutes. The narrow winding alleyways of the medina are too tight for cars to get through, so after we’d been dropped off along the perimeter of the old city, this fellow here with this big wheelbarrow-like contraption took our luggage and led the way to our accommodation.
The word “riad” means “gardens” and is used in Marrakech to refer to old-school Islamic mansions that typically have courtyards with fountains in the middle of them that’ve now been repurposed into guesthouses. Pictured here you have the room that’d been booked for us in a guesthouse called Riad Explore by a company called Toubkal Guide. These two beds were for Philippe, and I took the other pair of beds that were up in the loft that could be reached by following the stairs on the left side of the photo.
A couscous and chicken lunch with Philippe in Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square in the medina of Marrakech. I first met Philippe, who lives in Cairo but also has the flat in Paris where we’d spent those two days before flying south over the Med, while doing a hike on the Sinai Peninsula in 2022
Minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque as seen at sunset from the Jemaa el-Fnaa marketplace while we made our way to a more modern area of the city called Gueliz to eat some dinner
Village to Village
I mentioned the name earlier – Toubkal Guide is the company I hired to arrange this 5-day hike in the Atlas Mountains. For 500 Euros per person, they pick you up and drop you off at the airport, they put you up in a riad in Marrakech before and after the hike, they provide the 3-hour ride to and from Marrakech to the villages in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, and then they provide a guide and a muleteer/cook that will both accompany you during the five days of hiking. Here we are starting off with our guide Ibrahim in a village called Imi Oughlad which sits at an elevation of 1300 meters. For reference, the elevation of Marrakech had been 457 meters above sea level.
Our muleteer/cook Dris driving the mule we ended up referring to as Jacqueline. I’d never seen this method before, but any time Jacqueline started getting lazy or straying off the path, Dris would pick up her tail and use it as a sort of steering wheel to guide our beast of burden.
Place where we had our first break on Day 1 of the hike. We’d be heading towards that village down in the valley to have our lunch
Laundry day – clothes drying out on rocks in a village we’d walked through
Looking towards Gliz Village (2200m) in Ousertik Valley where we’d spend the night in a guesthouse called Gite Gliz. Gites are traditional Berber-style guesthouses and the one we stayed at there in Gliz Village had been the nicest we’d experience during the trek
View of Ousertik Valley from Gite Gliz
Our guide Ibrahim – on the right and wearing a “djellaba” – telling us to eat up as Dris walks away after having just dropped off the “tagine” dinner he’d cooked for us at Gite Gliz. Tagine usually comes in an earthenware dish with a conical lid, but since something like that might break while being transported on the back of a mule, the guys served us a metallic tagine throughout the hike. The bottom part of the tagine is on the table containing a bunch of chicken, potatoes and veg, and Dris has the conical lid in his hands as he’s walking away.
Photo that Philippe had taken of me polishing off a bowl of lentil soup before digging into the tagine
At pretty much all the breakfasts, we were given some “amlou” to dunk our bread in. Amlou is made of argan oil, almonds and honey
Ibrahim talking to Dris as he prepares lunch on the second day near a pass called Tizi N’Addi (3000m). Ibrahim spoke pretty good English, so he was easy enough to communicate with. And if he didn’t understand something in English, Philippe was usually able to explain it to him in Arabic to get the message across. But like most people from the Atlas Mountains, Ibrahim’s mother tongue is Amazigh. Dris on the other hand didn’t know any English and his Arabic was minimal, so there wasn’t much communication with him throughout the hike aside from gestures, nods and facial expressions.
Ibrahim leading us after lunch from Tizi N’Addi down to Tacheddirt Village (2300m)
Tacheddirt Village, where we’d spend our second night
Small shop with a great view that we passed while hiking on Day 3. Here Philippe had a coffee while Ibrahim and I enjoyed glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice
Imlil, situated at 1800m above sea level, is where most people start and end their attempts to summit Jebel (Mount) Toubkal. It’s where we’d sleep on Day 3 of the hike.
Up and Down the Mountain
Making our way up and out of Imlil on the morning of Day 4, heading towards Toubkal
Sign near the police checkpoint where you have to register at the entrance to Toubkal National Park. Just below the Arabic is local Amazigh script. We asked Ibrahim if he could read it and he said that whereas he could obviously speak the language, he – and many people he knows – can’t read or write it. Arabic, he said, is what he reads in.
Little snack stand on the side of the path a few kilometers beyond the police checkpoint where we made a stop for some coffee and orange juice. It was at this spot in December 2018 where two women – one Danish and one Norwegian, both in their twenties – decided to camp out for the night. It was also on this night, unfortunately, that a group of ISIS-affiliated shitheads came up that same path looking for “enemies of Allah” on whom they could get revenge for a recent battle that took place in Hajin, Syria, between ISIS and the “crusader alliance.” Three men who were later sentenced to death came across these women and proceeded to record a video of themselves killing them with knives and cutting their heads off. The next morning a group of hikers heading up the mountain came across the gory scene and reported the discovery to authorities who, upon investigation, found that one of these geniuses had left his ID at the scene of the crime. It was because of this incident that the aforementioned police checkpoint where we had to register upon entering had been built.
In the middle of this cluster of buildings located here at about 2350m, roughly halfway between Imlil and Toubkal mountain refuge where we’d be spending the night, is a shrine dedicated to Sidi Chamarouch, king of the jinns, where people come to pray and slaughter animals as an offering. Our guide Ibrahim, who takes a more salafist approach to Islam, did not approve of this sort of idolatry and didn’t really care to spend much time being around or talking about Sidi Chamarouch.
Great presentation by Dris on this starter to our Day 4 lunch which would soon be accompanied by a hot dish containing meat or eggs, I forgot which
Toubkal Refuge (3206m). During this time of year the sun doesn’t rise in Marrakech/Toubkal until almost 8:30 in the morning. So, on summit day, Day 5, we left the refuge around 6:15 or 6:30 when it was still pitch-black out
The sky and our surroundings at ten after 8 in the morning. It was pretty cold up there. The forecast for the peak was a high of like 15 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of 0. We wore crampons the whole way from the refuge to the peak and back. After summiting, I got back down to the refuge by like quarter to 11. During the walk up, both my two liters of water had frozen solid and wouldn’t defrost until sometime that afternoon after being exposed to several hours of high altitude solar radiation
View from the top of Jebel Toubkal (4167m), the highest peak in the Arab world
Neither me nor Philippe nor Ibrahim were big fans of the Toubkal refuge and didn’t want to spend another night up there after having come back down from the summit, so after having lunch and a brief rest at the refuge, we were back on the trail heading down by 1:30pm. Our destination that night had been a guesthouse in Ibrahim’s home village, Aroumd (pictured above), which sits at an elevation of about 1900m. After 3-4 hours of descent, we arrived to the guesthouse around 5pm.
Heart-shaped hole on a tree in Aroumd Village
Post-Hike
Because earlier in the trip Philippe had complimented Ibrahim on his djellaba and had expressed interest in getting one for himself, on the morning of Day 6 Ibrahim took us to a shop owned by one of his relatives in his home village where Philippe could do some shopping. Here he is alongside the owner of the shop.
When we got back to Marrakech, we went out for a celebratory dinner at a fancy French restaurant in the Gueliz area of the city. I found it pretty comical – and probably blasphemous to some uptight, snooty French folks – to see a phrase as crude as “doggy bag” written on the menu.
