Toubkal Winter Acsent

On leaving the Sahara after spending the last week trekking with camels through the dunes, I drove over the Atlas Mountains to Marrakech meeting our next group who had come to Morooco to climb North Africa's highest mountain Mt Toubkal.

Before making our way into foothills of the Atlas and the village of imlil we had time to for a qiuck lunch in the Fma El Fna which is a world famous square in the old city of Marrakech and a complete sensory overload. 

Leaving the hustle and bustle of Marrkaech behind we made our way towards the High Altas passing through mud brick Berber villages where little has changed for centuries winding our way slowly to Imlil the main stopover for anyne looking to climb Toubkal.

After a good nights sleep plenty of great Moroccan food we loaded up our mules and headed for the hills and the Neltner Refuge at 3200m and our Toubkal base camp.

It took us a 7 hours in total climbing 1400m, normally during March Toubkal refuge is buzzing with groups from all over Europe mainline ski - touring, but this year we've had very little snow, so winter conditions haven't been great.

We began our climb of Mt Toubkal around 7am climbing slowly out of the refuge making our way up the South Cwm sticking to the snow as much as possible avoiding removing our crampons, by 09.00am the sun had finally hit us and it was warming up quickly in fact I think temperatures hit around 23 by mid day.

This made our climb really tough with high temperatures the snow melting which meant we kept falling through the snow, plus the glare from the sun it was a tough climb, 

We made it the summit all very short of breath bit rewarded with stunning views, I must admit this must  have been something like my 30th Toubkal summit and I never tire of the summit views.

We're now down at the Refuge enjoying a mint tea and all feeling very pleased with our day.

Tomorrow we head back down to imlil for hot showers and more great food, then it Marrakech time!