Climbing Mount Toubkal, Morocco
Winter walking novice and Wanderlust editor Dan Linstead gets to grips with crampons and an ice-axe as he takes on the highest peak in north Africa
Dan Linstead | Issue 123 | October 2011
Is this really going to work? This time yesterday I was sipping a mint tea in Marrakech. Funny things, ice axes. Mmmmnnnnf.
These were the thoughts jostling in my mind as I threw myself head-first down a frozen gulley, stabbed my brand new ice axe into the snow, swung round 180°, felt slush shoot up my armpits, and finally slumped to a halt on my belly. I heard a ripple of ironic applause from my fellow trekkers at the top of the slope. Mohamed, our guide, tromped down to my side and pointed at the axe, now squeezed firmly between my chin and the snow. “The key is to keep the very sharp edge away from your throat,” he said with a sigh.
An hour’s basic ice axe training is an indignity to be endured if you want to climb Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, in winter. At 4,167m, Toubkal is a couple of vertical kilometres shy of the world’s biggest trekking peaks, and in summer it’s a tough but straightforward three-day round trip from Marrakech. But tackling it in winter adds an interesting extra dimension, with the High Atlas slathered in Miracle Whip. You need crampons strapped to your boots, and an ice axe to belay yourself (ie dig in and screech to a halt) if you take a slide on the mountain’s unremittingly steep flanks. I’d never used either, and I’d never climbed so high, but a milestone birthday loomed and I felt the need to test myself, so I took a flight to Marrakech.
It was March, and spring had come to the Red City. In the Majorelle Gardens, the giant bougainvillea was in riotous purple bloom and by lunchtime the streetside thermometers were clocking 34°C. The avalanche of winter gear in my bags (Snow gaiters! Freezeproof water hose!) seemed absurdly incongruous, as if my kit list had somehow got muddled up with Reinhold Messner’s. But sitting on the top floor of the Café des Epices, looking out over the Medina’s rooftops, I could just make out the hazy, white battlements of the mountains in the distance: half come-hither, half back-off. We drove south to meet them.
Heading to basecamp
The High Atlas are middle-aged mountains, geologically speaking, thrust up during the Jurassic period about the same time as the Alps. But they still look young and volatile, all loose scree and rubble, like a giant’s quarry abandoned for a tea-break. The road snaked away from the cactus-dotted lowlands into the foothills until we reached the trekkers’ gateway town of Imlil. Already the air was cooler. From here it was all foot and mule. We shouldered our day packs, offered a quiet prayer of thanks for the mules (who can carry up to 100kg each) and starting walking.
The basecamp for Toubkal ascents is the Neltner refuge, an alpine bunkhouse at 3,200m, from which you can reach the summit in a few hours. From Imlil (1,747m) to Neltner is a good day’s walk, or in our case an afternoon and a morning, broken by a night in the Berber village of Aroumd.
On that first afternoon, we walked along a river valley of tumbling meltwater, stretching our leg muscles in anticipation. There were six of us, aged 20s to 60s, and the talk was all of kit, altitude and whether our new rigid-soled, crampon-friendly boots would rub. Two of the group had climbed Kilimanjaro. “Some say Toubkal
in winter is harder,” said Mohamed with a sadistic gleam.
We passed ghostly orchards of walnut trees, their branches still bare. Along with cherries, quinces and apples, walnuts are one of the main products of the area, the ingredient for Morocco’s toothsome pastries and tagines. But in this hard-edged terrain even fruit-picking is hazardous. “Every year, people die falling from the high branches at harvest time,” Mohamed told us. Looking at the shattered basalt and granite in all directions, it was easy to believe: no soft landings here.
A flurry of greetings and carpet-viewing invitations ushered us into Aroumd, a jumble of dun houses and a rust-red minaret that seemed to have been carved straight from the granular rock. Vivid green barley terraces splashed the hillside, and ahead of us, the broad river valley swept on up into the Toubkal massif. We got our first glimpse of the mountain itself: jagged, snow-flecked and looking very, very high.
Crossing the snow line
After a night in the gite at Aroumd (my notes read: ‘Mobile signal gone. Wood burner in corner. Chicken tagine. Mint tea. Cards’), we pushed on towards the Neltner refuge early the next day. It was easy going at first, the trail climbing gently up towards the snowline. The sky was a soul-stirring cobalt, and when the sun crawled over the hilltops we were suddenly deluged in warmth. We passed woolly goats and mules carrying incredible loads: some for the locals (sacks of cement for a new irrigation channel) and others for visitors (a gaudily graffiti-ed snowboard).
We paused to take in a shrine at Sidi Chamharouch, where a huge whitewashed boulder draws the hopeful in search of fertility or better husbands. Shrines are
an oddity in a Muslim country, but for the entrepreneurial Berbers it seemed more of a sales opportunity than a place of pilgrimage anyway: hidey-hole shops around the shrine offered everything from Fanta to tasselled cushions.
Shortly afterwards, we hit the snow line – and everything changed. It had been closing in on the hillsides around us for a while, but when it came, it came suddenly – from bare earth to deep snow on the turn of a corner.
A huddle of mules were being unloaded; porters shouldered the weight for the last hour’s slippery trudge to the refuge.
It’s a strange thing walking up into snow; like crossing a border. From here on, I hardly felt I was in Morocco. Before, everything absorbed light; now everything dazzled and shone. The only sounds were the scrunch-squeak of footsteps and the slow, ever-deeper exhalations of breath. We had entered another country, the land of the mountains, which had more in common with Switzerland or Nepal than Marrakech.
The ascent begins
By the time we stomped into the refuge I was, frankly, knackered. It had been a six-hour walk and we were now well over 3,000m. I sat down on the stone steps and looked up at the peaks surrounding us – a 1,000m wall of rock and snow on three out of four sides. We were at the bottom of a giant sugar bowl and I felt like a rather light-headed ant.
All around me was the scrape and flap of winter activity. Austrians were pulling off touring skis; Slovenians were laying out gaiters to dry; Spaniards were slurping soup; Berber guides in hand-me-down ski-wear were ribbing each other uproariously. There was a smell of soggy boot leather and thrice-worn socks, and a rumbling, low-level international war over who got the chairs by the fire.
We found bunks, took our turn in the kitchen and wolfed a vast serving of carbohydrates. Then Mohamed told us he’d had an idea. Instead of going for a try-out-your-crampons walk in the morning, he thought we’d go straight up Toubkal instead. After all, the weather looked nice, and once we’d done our ice axe training that afternoon (see above), we’d be raring to go the next day, surely? None of us had the energy to deny it.
At six the next morning – ascent day! – we awoke to news. A member of another group had been taken ill with altitude sickness in the night and had to be stretchered back down below the snowline. “Fluid on the lungs. One more night and he would have died,” said Mohamed.
It was hardly an auspicious start to our assault on the 4,000m mark, and there was a certain grimness to my preparations. And winter walking does take some prep. There are all your usual layers of course, plus walking poles and sun cream and lip salve, and water bladders to be filled (at last, the freezeproof drinking tube has its moment). But there are also your waterproofs (top and bottom), and a down jacket, goggles and hat, and snow gaiters and crampons. And you finally think you’re done – but no, you’ve left your bloody ice axe in the dorm, and off it all has to come again as you go and retrieve it.
Summit in sight
Finally, we were all ready, and we set off up Toubkal. A line of sunshine was oozing down the high peaks like honey. “Up, up, up, all the way,” was Mohamed’s summary of the climb, and he wasn’t wrong. The first haul was up a near 40° incline, and we proceeded crocodile-fashion in long zig-zags towards the first of three saddles.
There’s a rhythm to walking on snow, and it’s slow. On a traverse, your ice axe goes in your hill-facing hand, and you push that in first. Then you stamp one cramponed boot into the snow, then the other, trying not to skewer yourself in the process. Then out comes the ice axe, you dig it in a bit further along, and on you go. Quite often, you have to take a breather, but after a while a certain zen quality takes over. Soon it was all about the crunch of snow, and ever heavier breathing.
The next four hours were tough. Mercifully, our emergency ice-axe belaying training was never put to the test but one of the group did have crampon trouble and had to be roped up and escorted down. Somewhere around 3,800m, I got a headache. We straggled and struggled, and Mohamed goaded us on with many a “Yalah!”. Every time I looked behind me, the views were more magnificent – but in front there was just slope. Breathers became more and more frequent.
I had my doubts. But, eventually, we reached the upper slopes and the snow gave way to a stark rubble field.We unstrapped our crampons, and walked up to the final ridge, where an epic vista of serried peaks unfurled before us, the anti-Atlas in one direction, the Sahara in the other. No wonder the Berbers christened it Toug-akal; the viewpoint. A few minutes later, we were standing on the peak, the highest people in north Africa. It was utterly calm and quiet, just a few birds and not a breath of wind. If you’ve climbed anything big or hard, you’ll know the feeling. It’s sweet.
But perhaps not as sweet as the descent. This was a joy, a walk I could do forever. If your knees dread coming down mountains, try it on great gloopy, thigh-deep drifts of snow. I ran down the last slope to the refuge in leaping bounds; one 60-year-old
in our party gleefully tobogganed down on his waterproofs. That night we bagged the best seats by the common-room fire and toasted our success in mugs of tea.
Peak to peak
Having topped Toubkal, our remaining days in the mountains could have been an anti-climax, but in fact they were the reverse. With the big box ticked, I began to truly enjoy rather than endure the peaks. The crampon and ice-axe fandango grew ever more familiar, and I started to notice more around me: the dusting of Saharan sand over south-facing slopes, the footprints of foxes in the snow, the rippled tongues of avalanches.
There was another peak to bag, too: Toubkal’s little sister, Jebel Ounakrim. At 4,088m it’s only 80m short of Toubkal, and for me it’s the better walk. The first two hours were a gentle climb up a pristine snowfield to a sharp ridge where suddenly the dusty lowlands of the Sahara loomed into view. Then it was a short, hairy scramble over snowy boulders (half of the group declined), a knife-edge ridge traverse and finally a steepish stomp up to the top.
The view from the summit cairn was again magnificent – Toubkal on the other side of the valley, the central Atlas shimmering to the west – but it’s the final climb to reach it that sticks in my mind, the zen of winter walking. For that hour, it was just my breath and my heart in my ears, and the glint of snow underfoot, and all my focus on the summit, and knowing nobody else on the planet could understand the exultation of being up here, on this day, now. That brand new ice axe was starting to feel like it was really mine.
The author travelled with Exodus on its one-week Mt Toubkal Winter Climb
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