Morocco (April
2023): Twelve-day traverse of the central part of the High Atlas
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In May 2023 I returned to Morocco to do
a hiking traverse of the central part of the High Atlas. As on many of my previous
trips to Morocco, the itinerary and logistics were arranged by my friend Oumar Oulaidi. The itinerary
was perfectly designed to avoid roads as much as possible and cross a great
diversity of landscapes. It also stayed in areas visited by relatively few
hikers. (In fact, I saw none during the entire traverse.) During the trek I was
accompanied by Brahim and Zaid, both Berbers living
in the Ait Bouguemez
valley, respectively in the villages of Ifrane and Rbat. Our loads were carried by two mules.
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Brahim |
Zaid |
We did the traverse from west to east. We
started in the village of Inighdene, about 31km
south-east of the town of Denmat, 90km east of
Marrakesh. We ended the traverse 12 days later near the village of Alemdoun, 22km north of Qalaat Mgouna, at Oumar's lodge. The approximate trek area is shown
in the map below. The original plan had been to end the hike at Tabant in the valley of the Ait Bouguemez after crossing Tizi n-Toudat (a 2658m pass) south of Zawyat
Ahancal. However, as we reached the southern slope of
Tizi n-Toudat, a snowstorm
combined with freezing winds forced us to turn around and, instead, end the
hike further south at Oumar's lodge, where the
weather was more lenient. Such a storm event during the second half of May is
extremely unusual. Based on my experience on many hikes in the Atlas, I had
planned for hot days well above 20C and night temperatures well above 10C, even
in the 20s. So, I did not have adequate clothes to withstand freezing
temperatures. After a day of rest at the lodge, Brahim
and I decided to go to the Ait Boughemez
valley by car (a relatively new road connects the two places) and attempt an
ascent of Djebel Azourki (3350m). There, another
snowstorm dashed this attempt. It turned out that this exceptionally bad weather
lingered on the Atlas for several more days, with short clearings, at least until
the beginning of June.
The change of itinerary was a little disappointing.
However, I had already crossed Tizi n-Toudat in April 2014 in much better weather conditions (see
here).
Moreover, during several previous trips I had also hiked in the mountains east
of the Ait Bouguenez valley
(2004,
2008,
2014).
The damage was therefore minimal.
The
map below shows the approximate hike area (dotted rectangle):
The picture below shows the GPS
waypoints I recorded during the traverse in a satellite photo. To access these waypoints, click here, download the morocco-2023.kmz file,
and open the file in Google Earth. The successive way points are numbered 0
(start of the hike in Inighdene) to 138 (Oumar's lodge in Alemdoun). The
waypoints with green icons are night locations; the last one marks Oumar's lodge.
The red line in the following topographic
map represents the path followed during the traverse. To download the four map
sheets (scale: 1/100,000) at full resolution used to assemble the picture below
click here:
101-AZILAL (for the top-left corner of the picture), 116-SKOURA (for the bottom-left
corner), 117-QALAT-MGOUNA (for the bottom-right corner), and 102-ZAWYAT-AHANCAL
(for the top-right corner).
[For an extensive source of topographic maps of
Morocco click this link: https://jemecasseausoleil.blogspot.com/2017/06/cartes-du-maroc.html.]
The traverse
first follows a route north of the Tessaout river and
includes the ascents of the summits of Jebel Rat and Jebel Tig-Nousti. After crossing the Tessaout
above the village of Amezri, it follows a path
between the Mgoun range to the north and smaller
ranges to the south, until it reaches and crosses the Mgoun
river. Then it heads to the north toward Tizi n-Toudat and, following the snowstorm, swings south to reach Alemdoun. The straight-line distance between the start and
the easternmost point of the hike is approximately 70km.
To see pictures of the various parts of this trip, click on the following
links (photos or their captions):
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