I was sharing a bus seat with an old woman, a child, a goat and several bags of vegetables. The bus was absolutely rammed, with several people on the roof, but the driver stopped whenever he saw someone walking and tried to persuade them to buy a ticket and get on. Nobody did. Such was the bus from Marrakech to Asni. I had been told that it left at 7am and, being new to Morocco, had duly turned up at that time. Unsurprisingly there was nobody else there. A few people started trickling in around eight, a bus arrived about ten-ish and by eleven the driver had crammed in enough people for it to be worthwhile setting off. We stopped at least a dozen times on the way out of the city for the driver to argue with passers-by. Nobody was in a hurry.
Because it was afternoon by the time we got to Asni there were no takers to share a taxi for the 17km up the dirt road to Imlil. I eventually discovered that a quarry truck was going most of the way up empty and would take me up to to the road end for a price. Much haggling ensued. I was just starting walking guiding at the time and used to being at the bottom end of the income scale (I earned about 20% of the national average at the time), but to the locals I was a rich westerner. My backpack was probably worth their annual income! We agreed on a price (quite expensive, but then the driver held all the cards) and I hoiked my sack onto the back of the truck and swung up after it. At this point loads of locals appeared from nowhere, paid the driver a couple of dirham (about 14 pence) and jumped up too. There were about twenty people on the back by the time we left. We had no common language, as they spoke no French and I no Arabic or Tamazight, but they were a cheery lot and much hand waving ensued🙂.
Imename Valley
The CAF hut at Imlil was more like a hostel than a mountain hut, very comfortable and with plenty of space. If you went across the square to the bakery early in the morning you could get freshly baked bread, delicious if eaten straight away, still edible the next morning but basically a frisbee by that evening. There had been heavy snow the day before so the avalanche risk on Toubkal was high and I decided to do a few peaks around Tacheddirt first. This is the highest village in Morocco and at the time had no road to it, just a track over the pass of Tizi n-Tamatert, about 600m above Imlil.
Anrhemer and upper Imenane
There was another CAF hut in the village (but no nice bakery ☹️), which I shared with a bunch of French ski mountaineers set on the traverse of Bou Iguenouane (3882m). My first objective was Anrhemer (3892m), graded Facile by the West Ridge, and the next morning I set off up this. The snow was nice and crisp so crampons went on early for an open couloir. They were new and didn't fit my boots well, so fell off almost immediately. I 'adjusted' them by hammering them narrower with a convenient rock, and had no problems with them for years afterwards! Anrhemer has two peaks and the ridge between them was enjoyably airy, with some scrambling. I was feeling the altitude and didn't fancy reclimbing the West Peak so investigated a snow gully that led down northwards. It had a rock step at the top so I threw a big rock down to see what the surface was like. It didn't whizz off and made a nice platform so I jumped down onto it, then had an excellent bumslide before what seemed a long plod back to Tacheddirt.
On the north side of the valley was the bulky peak of Angour, all rock on this south-facing side. Some of the rock climbs here were put up in the 1920's by Bentley Beetham, best known in Britain for his many climbs in Borrowdale. I had a fun easy scramble up the south-east ridge to the snowy summit plateau and twin tops. The West Ridge wasn't in my guidebook but it didn't look too steep so I decided it was worth a look. It had one awkward rock step but wasn't all that hard. It gets PD+ in the modern guide but I found it easier than Anrhemer. The less said the better about the gully descending from the Tizi n-Grouden though!
Snow shower on Angour and the upper Imenane
I was finally beginning to feel acclimatised so went for a big day the next day. Tacheddirt is dominated by the 1500m north face of Akhsoual, 4 km long and with only four recorded routes on it at the time. The spur running down from the minor top of Tazegzaout n-Louah at the east end looked an obvious line so I climbed that, with good snow most of the way. It was superb, with narrow snow aretes, pinnacles and a couple of tricky rock bits, a giant Scottish Grade II. From the top a good ridge led up to the summit of Akhsoual proper (3912m), with a hairy descent beyond. The ridge to the other main summit, Azrou n-Tamadot (3842m), had a succession of hard-looking pinnacles but I avoided these by an easy snow shelf on the south side. From just beyond the summit a snow couloir went down northwards, softening but still reasonable. It gave me the longest glissade I've ever had, 1200m, standing at first and fairly cautious, then after a brief angle sideways down a ramp to avoid a steep step I let loose and whizzed on my backside down the gentler bottom half.
Aguelzim from Tizi n-Tamatert
I'd run out of good peaks to do from Tacheddirt so walked back over to Imlil the next day, with a detour up a minor peak for the view. I did the last bit with three of the local guides, who are all enormously fit, not living our soft western lifestyle. If I went full blast I could just keep up with their 'casual' pace. They were quite surprised that a tourist could hang in with them at all and christened me "L'homme de Fer" (Iron man). I was ridiculously chuffed😁. At Imlil the CAF hut was busier than before and I met Howard, Alain and Mike, two Canadians and an Aussie who had made a drunken agreement at the Munich beer festival the previous year to meet up at Asni and climb Toubkal. Surprisingly they had all made it on the appointed date. They hadn't a clue about what was involved, hadn't expected snow in March 🙄 and had never used an axe or crampons before. They hired some spectacularly antiquated kit from a local and over an entertaining evening a Chinese Mancunian called Ying and I showed them how to fit the crampons. I agreed to unofficially guide them up the peak, which was trusting of them as I hadn't been there before either😁.
Toubkal from Ouanoukrim
We went up to the Neltner Hut below Toubkal the next day (only one hut in those days). It was full, and as it was Ramadan the local guides weren't allowed to eat during daylight, so they had to spend most of the night cooking. Not much sleep was had by anybody. We left at 6am, on superb snow right down to the hut, and the three lads found walking with spiky things on their feet fine. We took the standard South Cwm route, and came down the less frequented North Cwm. I made a couple of detours to pick up the minor 4000m summits of Toubkal West and Imouzzer, the latter a good scramble. We were down by lunchtime, then the lads had to head on down to return the crampons and axes by 5pm. I had another three nights food so planned to do the peaks of the Ouanoukrim Crest on the other side of the valley.
Afella and Binguinoussene
In the morning the snow in the Ikhelloun Ravine was frozen hard and gave easy cramponning up between Afella and Binguinoussene. I then did what my diary describes as an "excellent scramble" up to the North Summit of Afella. I have no memory of this, and looking at modern pictures I still can't see how I did it. Probably somewhere left of the North Ridge proper, which rises in vertical steps. I did both tops, an unexpectedly gentle amble, then descended the west shoulder to the pass of Tizi Melloul. Tazaghart (3980m) was an easy 100m up and down from here, with some minor scrambling – it gets PD+ in the modern guide, which is definitely an overgrading in the conditions I had. From there an unpleasantly rough traverse in soft snow and boulders led round to Tizi Afella. I could now hear a strange intermittent wailing noise wafting in from the snow shelves right of the ridge. Going round to see what was going on I found that it was four Swiss guides practicing their yodelling, not something I expected to find in Morocco🙄. The shelves led easily to the summit of Akhioud and an easy descent to the hut (more glissades and bumslides!). I was dozing in the sun on the verandah when a shadow fell on me and a voice addressed me in English. I had forgotten that I was wearing an Aston Uni Mountaineering Club T-shirt. The voice turned out to belong to well-known mountaineer Jim Curran, up to climb Toubkal with a couple of friends, leading to an entertaining evening swapping stories (his were much better than mine😁).
Lac d'Ifni from below Timesguida
The classic easy gully in the area is the North-East Couloir of Ras so that was the next objective, a very scenic slot, full of more perfect neve. It brings you out onto a nice airy snow arete leading to the summit of Ras n-Ouanoukrim (4083m), from where it's an easy stroll to the Atlas's second highest peak, Timesguida (4088m). The view southwards was superb, sharp and clear, right out to the distant Anti-Atlas range on the edge of the Sahara. A couple of hours later it looked very different. As I was by now pretty fit I had added on the traverse of the scrambly pinnacles of Bou Ouzzal to the Tizi Ouanoums below Toubkal, but looking south from their summit the Anti-Atlas were now obscured by a vast black cloud. The temperature had also dropped and the glissade down to the hut was still on hard snow this time. By 2pm it was starting to snow and it became obvious that my objective for the next day, the V Diff rock tower of Tadat, wasn't going to be feasible. Why hang around in the overcrowded hut eating pasta and sardines yet again when I could be down in the comforts of Imlil with a proper meal in two and a half hours? It was a no brainer (although that phrase wasn't current then). I was really glad I did, as when Jim Curran and his mates came down the next day it took them six hours, with waist deep snow in places. Jim said that he had never seen so much snow fall in a short time, even in his Andean and Himalayan travels. About a metre and a half came down overnight.
The end of the trip turned out rather more exciting than I had planned. I had booked as a flight-only extra on a tour company plane (very cheap), but while I was in the mountains the tour company changed the return flight time from 18.00 to 14.35. This wasn't a problem for their clients as they were all together in Marrakech, but I was uncontactable (mobile phones weren't generally available in 1990). I thought I was fine as I got to the airport with 3 hours to spare, but this was just in time to see my flight take off. You weren't supposed to take Moroccan currency out of the country so I had run my cash down to 30 centimes. After extremely briefly contemplating the delights of hitching back through Spain and France with no money I applied a bit of logic. The plane I was supposed to leave on would obviously have brought in a new group and they must be staying somewhere, and there would be a guide with them. A well-informed local gave me the answer "Hotel El-Andalous, and the guide will be there at 9am tomorrow" and I set off to walk in to Marrakech.
The Jmaa el Fnaa, the main square in Marrakech
Two hours across the desert in the dark was a memorable experience. I had a fiver in English money for when I got back to Heathrow so I changed this into dirham at the hotel. This was enough to pay for a night in the Youth Hostel, where two friendly French lads fed me. The guide duly turned up at 9am and wasn't surprised to see me. This was partly because she had tried to contact me to tell me about the change in flight time, but mainly because the guy who had given me the information in the airport was her husband! She agreed that the mix up was the tour company's responsibility to sort and arranged a flight out with Royal Air Maroc in two days time, booking me into a hotel on half board for the nights in between. Many thanks to the very Irish (and very pregnant) Bridget Reilly. I had two days wandering around Marrakech with no money, which was interesting. On visits to the souk earlier in the trip everybody had been trying to sell me something, but now they weren't – the bush telegraph had told them that I was the westerner who didn't have any money. I got to try out various instruments and came away very impressed with anybody who could play the 21 stringed kora. I made sure I got to the airport with huge amounts of time to spare!
Anrhemer from Seti Fadma
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