A Quick Look in the Atlas
A
Winter Break in
I don’t know
how it came to pass but I was left with a few days of holiday to take before
the end of January. I wanted to go somewhere sunny, mountainous, not too far
away, and cheap. The Atlas Mountains of central
Thursday
morning at 8.30 I was at
At
The ship
was basic (but luxurious compared to the African ship I came back on) and I
spent the journey on the deck absorbing the atmosphere of the strait. The two
continents are only eight miles apart geographically but a world apart
culturally as I found out to my peril when) got off the boat. I was greeted by
an ‘official” tourist guide to Tangier
who informed me that there were no trains or buses out of town that
night and he would be glad to advise me on a choice of hotel. I was fortunate
to spy a railway timetable on the wall and worked out there was a train leaving
at 11.4Opm from
This rigmarole was repeated several times on the way to the station. Once there
the ticket clerk confirmed that there was a train and that I could get some
Moroccan currency at a hotel across the street. On the way across there a drug
addict/dealer offered me a very fine assortment of cannabis at a very
reasonable price, however in view of the sort of protection rackets I had
already seen in the twenty minutes since getting off the boat, I wasn’t tempted
at all. Money exchanged, I went and got my ticket and, with an hour to spare
before departure, strolled across the square to a restaurant for some tea.
Yet again a
gentleman ‘helped” me order my meal and tried to sell me all manner of illegal
things ending up with the usual demanding of money, this time with
menaces. When I refused to pay up he got very upset and aggressive and several
of his associates gathered round. I knew when I was beat and ended up parting
with 50 dirhams (3 quid) and resolving never to let
it happen again. I had had enough of Tangier and so I got on the train.
The train
journey was long, uncomfortable and smelly. It also rained very hard and many
of the places we passed through were flooded. At 4am we reached Casablanca and at lOam
we pulled into Marrakesh station and, having read my Fodor’s
Guide which had no information of mountains and trekking I set off to find the
tourist information office. They had some information on how to approach the
mountains but no maps or itineraries so I started looking round bookshop!. They had no maps either but a customer called Robert in
one of the shops advised me on a good trek to do from Telouet
to Demnate, and thought I could get by with just my
Michelin map of
Armed with
this information and a bellyful of lunch I headed down the bus station. There
they informed me that all the buses to Tizi n Tichkat, the starting point on the
main road, were cancelled as the road was blocked with
snow. So I decided to trek around the central group of the High Atlas which Isn’t approached on high altitude roads and got on a bus to Asni. The last of the rain showers were
dying out as the bus pulled out of Marreakesh and
it was dark when we got to Asni. A
kid took me through ankle-deep liquid mud to a cafe in the square where I met
his brother who said I could stay round at his house, 30 dh
for the dinner and 30 dh for the bed. It sounded OK so I went round there. The
dinner was Tagine of Lamb, a sort of Lancashire
Hotpot cooked in a clay pot over a fire. It was tasty and there was plenty of
it washed down with a couple of brews of mint tea. After tea the brother got out
a few pieces of the family treasure to show me. When I declined to buy them he
got the hump and said they were: Saharan antiques, a bargain, high quality,
real gemstones, etc. I insisted that there really wasn’t any room in my already
overloaded rucksack but he said he’d take my tent, sleeping bag, jacket, etc.
in exchange. Thinking I wouldn’t walk out and find somewhere else to stay, he
raised the price of the dinner and bed to 100 dh and started to threaten me
with violence, I left the 30 dh I owed and went and stayed at the hassle-free
youth hostel. The moral is, beware of staying at peoples’ houses.
Next
morning it was bright and frosty and the liquid mud had frozen. It was also
Market Day so I went and stocked up on provisions for the trek. After arguing
with some lorry drivers over the price of a lift to the next village, Imlil, I decided to walk it. 17km of fine scenery up a
beautiful river valley, steep-sided with a carpet of blight green irrigated
fields is the bottom. 1 got to ImIil at 2pm and people
informed me it was five or six hours to the Neltner Hut and the snow was quite deep.
“It’ll be reet!” I thought and set off immediately. The path winds
around, divides and rejoins and children direct you the wrong way in an effort
to extort guiding money from you. It was a point of honour
to find my own way and soon I was above the tree-line in increasingly deep snow
and sub-zero temperatures. At the last, empty village, Sidi Chamarouch I took a wrong turn
and a Monk-type bloke in sandals redirected
me. Here it started to get steep and I was buggered. But there was nowhere to
stay so I scoffed some chocolate and carried on. In the last rays of daylight I
found the only snow-free bivouac spot under an overhanging boulder and pitched
the tent.
I was bloody glad I did because when I set off in the morning it was about
another hour and a half over crisp snow (you know, the stuff that gives way
every second step and leaves you up to your knees) before I got to the Neltner Refuge. The hut, run by the
Club Alpin Francais
Casablanca Branch, was similar to the more basic alpine huts, although it had a
certain African atmosphere to it (damp and smelly). I talked to the warden
about climbing up
The
atmosphere at the hut was one of boredom and I had seen all I could without
climbing, so I set off back to Imlil covering
the last section in the dark and arriving at 7pm. I stayed in the very
reasonable hostel there with some lads from Bury. The next day I had a choice:
With two hiking days left, I could either take the safe option
and take a round-about route back to Asni or I
could push the boat out and head Eastwards along the North side of the High
Atlas range to Setti Fatma along
a more difficult and little used route. Unable to resist a challenge I took the
second option. The path to Tachedirt was
an easy, disused jeep track winding up through some of the only pine forests in
It was 4pm when I reached the
pass and I stopped to take a few snaps before heading on eastwards. The tops
were still clear but the valleys were filling up with some sinister-looking
fog. The snow was firm as I set off running down but the deeper I went into the
steep-sided valley out of the reach of the sun’s rays, the softer it became. I
was about 30Gm down by the time I realised that the
snow was getting softer, and the thought of retreating back to Tachedirt up 30Om of snow slope was
uninviting.
I was beyond
the point of no return and committed to going down to Setti
Fatma when the seriousness of the
situation dawned on me:I was in the middle of the
High Atlas and nobody knew where I was.
-l was going down a steep valley full of
powdery snow and floundering up to my waist
in it.
-l couldn’t
flounder back up.
-l
didn’t know whether I could get right down the valley or whether there would be
an obstacle such as a cliff or a gorge.
-There was
an hour-and-a-half of daylight left and no sign of a campsite.
-Freezing
fog was pumping up out of the valley and an icy wind was starting to blow.
The only thing to do seemed to be to flounder on and hope for the best, so that
was what I did for the next hour or so. After a particularly narrow part of the
valley where I was forced to traverse along a ledge, the path, which had been
buried in deep snow on the North-facing slope, crossed over to the South-facing
slope and came into view through the fog as a diagonal white line across the
hill side. I headed for it and followed its zig-zag
course down through the luxury of knee-deep snow. As if that wasn’t fortunate
enough, I soon came to a piece of flat ground with no snow on it, the like of
which I hadn’t seen all day. Allah was being kind to me. Not so kind was the
weather. The temperature was about -5C and a stiff, foggy breeze impeded my
single-handed tent pitching efforts. Inside it was cosy
with the cooker on and I passed a chilly night with all my clothes on.
In the
morning I continued on to the first village. The first old bloke I met was
quite surprised to see me and took me to his house for a brew and an early
lunch of bread and butter. The rest of the village came and quizzed me about
the trip. Apparently not many people pass by that way in the winter! By late afternoon I had reached the road head
and tourist town of
At 3.3Oam the cafe closed and so I moved to another one along the street. This
was marginally better as the waiter not only looked after me, but forcefully
evicted drug dealers and scrounging addicts. One bloke kept trying to come back
in and the waiter kept on chasing him out. Another sat down and started to
drink another customer’s tea, so the waiter knocked him over with a right hook
to the face! About 5am a big fight broke out between two rival gangs and I
decided it was time to run for it. So I went and got my ticket and wandered
down to the ferry port. After a fourth large, strong coffee it was time to
board so I went and joined the queue. After a long wait most people got to the
front to find that the ticket should have been exchanged for a boarding card at
another office. Eventually I got out onto the quay and found the right boat.
They were checking passports again on the gangplank with another half-hour
queue, but my ring piece was about to burst so I pushed to the front.
The boat was already late and by the time it left it was 9am. What with a
two-hour crossing and an hour’s time difference I was in shit
street for catching the plane at 2pm. At
At
I eventually got back on the evening flight to
Pete
Hall.
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