ᐅ Summit No. 6 Toubkal (Morocco) | Top Summits of the World

SUMMITS

SUMMIT Nº 6: TOUBKAL (MOROCCO)

MOROCCO

TOUBKAL

31 / 10 / 2021

ALTITUDE

4.167m

ÒSCAR SOLSONA AND ANDREU LÓPEZ

DIFFICULTY LEVEL

MEDIUM

CHRONICLE

Top Summits leaves Europe and lands in Africa for the first time. The destination is Morocco. Making the ascent to Toubkal, the highest point in the country at 4,167 meters, necessarily requires hiring a guide. We don’t know the country too well and we chose Òscar to travel with a travel agency in Catalonia specialized in mountain trips and which is a fairly practical and economical option for us. We arrive in Marrakech around noon. We are well accommodated, centrally located next to Jamaa el Fna Square, which is the nerve center of the city.

It is late and we are going to get to know the Moroccan cuisine that does not disappoint us and in my case I really enjoy the “tajine”. Moroccan cuisine relies heavily on spices and this is a good starting point for a kitchen “sybarite” like me. After providing food to the body, we go out to discover the city that we immediately realize is not our style since we constantly receive incentives to buy. We link the Jamaa el Fna Square with the “Souk” which is a labyrinth of streets full of shops, places to eat… and where we buy a flag of the country that we will use at the summit and that has already become a routine of our international expeditions.

Our urban walk does not last long. We miss the tranquility on our walk and we choose to take refuge in the hotel that tastes bad but becomes our best moment of the afternoon. We rest for a while and wait for dinner, in which we do not make an excessively long excursion to find a restaurant and in which we try another of the classics of Moroccan cuisine; the couscous.

They have summoned us at 7:00 in the morning for lunch. I am stressed by the crowd of people in our group that is concentrated in the room and that are easily over thirty…it is not a very hiking environment and there are really people with little physical condition and experience in the mountains who are attracted by the low difficulty of the mountain and also by the beginning of the end of mobility restrictions. At 8:00 in the morning we leave for the town of Igdir, which at 1,750 meters will be the starting point of our route.

In Igdir we know the rest of the members of our expedition that will be the local guides as well as the animal that dominates and monopolizes the trails of the Atlas, the donkey and that will be in charge of transporting the luggage of our expedition to the Toubkal Refuge at 3,207 meters and that will be the end point of our stage today. Today’s stage has a distance of 12 km and around 1,500 meters of positive elevation gain.

We begin to walk while a series of people, for whom it seems that time does not pass, contemplate us. In these mountain towns you can breathe a very different rhythm from that of Marrakech and where the economy is very precarious. It is a dry landscape with practically no vegetation in which the first kilometers of the expedition follow the course of the Isougouanne river until reaching “Marabout de Sidi Chamharouch”, a place halfway to the end of the stage. We take advantage of the fact that there are awnings in the surroundings to protect us from the heat and at the same time to serve us food.

I am especially prudent and I reserve myself from eating salad and fruit… in any case, we will take the risks once we have the summit in the bag. With a full belly and the heat, it’s hard to start and more uphill, but it’s what we have to do, gain altitude to reach the refuge. Òscar and I remain ahead of the group and we don’t have excessive problems to keep up with the set pace… the week before on a training day we walked 30 km with about 3,000 of positive unevenness so our legs will have no problems managing the planned program and only the unknown will remain to see how we respond to the altitude on the day of the ascent.

The refuge has what is necessary without having exceptional facilities. We have dinner, chat a little with the group and we are going to sleep very soon since at 5:00 in the morning we will have to get up to head towards its highest point in the country. During the night I become very friendly with Francesc who sleeps next to me. Together we build an alliance whose purpose is to wake up the person who is preventing us from sleeping with their snoring. More people join our particular crusade but unfortunately we are unable to improve the result and we lose by a landslide. Many of us, tired of the orchestra, choose not to wait until 5:00 in the morning and we go to make time in the dining room. I am one of them and I will wait patiently and ready for 5:00 in the morning to leave.

It is at night when we start walking and we have to help ourselves from the front but not for long since the first rays of daylight soon visit us and with them, the views of the Ouanoukrim massif, opposite Toubkal.

From 3,700 meters you begin to notice the height and the lack of oxygen, although it is a route without any technical complications. Very soon we will reach the summit of Toubkhal, roof of the Atlas and very satisfied with Òscar for having achieved our first 4 thousand. To go down we make a circular route to the Toubkal Refuge, which passes through the remains of a crashed military plane. In this second stage we have 21 km as well as 1,100 meters of positive slope and 2,500 meters of negative slope for an accumulated total of the two days of trekking of 33 km and 2,600 meters (+/-).