Morocco Photos 1

Morocco Ski Mountaineering: Skiing

Morocco Ski Mountaineering: Skiing

                The morning after getting settled into the refuge we were finally ready to do some actual skiing.  There were numerous couloirs to ski in the valley, but the guidebook mentioned just two that were located on the north face of Tazaghart, the Descent Couloir and the Diagonal Couloir.  For our first objective we decided on the Descent Couloir. 

Deceptively difficult rock step in the Diagonal Couloir

                The Descent Couloir is the most obvious couloir in the valley and we set off in the morning, skinning from the Lepiney Refuge.  We skinned up the apron of the north face until we arrived at the base of our route.  From there, it was time to throw the skis on our back and boot up the couloir proper.  The snow in the couloir was a mix between easily bootable firm snow and softer snow that we would sink in to about knee-deep.  Taking turns leading up the couloir, we got about three quarters of the way up and were stopped because the top of the couloir had been windswept and was super rocky, not allowing us to ski that portion.  This meant that we would not be topping out on Tazaghart, which is a long, flat plateau that is supposedly large enough to land a plane on.  From the end of the snow line we clicked into our skis and were ready for our first real turns in Africa.  The couloir was of moderate steepness and not too narrow allowing us an enjoyable ski descent.  We took turns skiing down pitch by pitch and were soon down to the apron.  For our first route in Africa, we were pretty pleased.

On the right: Descent Couloir, Narrow strip in the middle: Hidden Couloir, To the left of Hidden Couloir: Route that wasn't connected, On the left: Diagonal Couloir

                The next day, we intended to ski a couloir right next to the Descent Couloir that looked like it would go.  Unfortunately, halfway up the couloir we realized that there was a rock cliff in the way, and what we thought was the upper part of the couloir happened to be the upper reaches of yet another couloir.  We skied down what we could and ended up at the base of the Diagonal Couloir, which was right next door to our intended route.

                As we booted up the Diagonal Couloir we found a snow ravine in the middle of it that ran the vertical length of the route.  In places it was between five and six feet deep.  I had never seen anything quite like it.  We were hoping at some point it would end, but it just kept going.  We reached a small rock step in the couloir that would have been a piece of cake to climb with no snow on the rock and running shoes but was a different story with ski boots and snow covered rock.  With a little work, we were able to get over  the rock step, but much to our chagrin, the snow ravine continued upward.  We decided to continue on but shortly came to yet another rock step that looked even larger.  With the thought of having to downclimb the previous rock step in our minds, we decided to call it and head down.  The snow ravine cut right through our already narrow couloir and we had to ingloriously walk down the route.  Once again we had been denied the chance to reach the top of Tazaghart.

Hidden Couloir

                After two days in the Lepiney valley, we had done a pretty good recon and had picked out two other couloirs to attempt that looked promising.  The next day, we were ready to try a hidden couloir we had spied previously.  It looked like a very thin strip of snow plastered to the north face, just what we had come all the way here for.  Again, we skinned to the base of the route before having to boot.  Just as we had suspected, the couloir was moderately steep and extremely narrow.  We took turns in the lead and made good time reaching the top of the couloir.  Of course, the top of the route wasn’t quite the top of the ever elusive summit of Tazaghart.  This didn’t matter much to us, we were psyched on our descent.  We downclimbed about 10m from the top where we carefully put on our skis on a precariously steep slope, not wanting to kick a ski down and have it sail down the length of the couloir.  The route being so narrow, jump turns were mandatory the whole way down.  Between the energy-sapping jump turns and the elevation of between 11,000 and 12,000 ft, we were breathing hard and skiing in short pitches.  Couloir skiing being perhaps my favorite type of skiing, I was loving it.  There was one section too narrow to even side-slip down and had to be downclimbed.  Our legs were aching when we finally made it to the bottom of the route.  Once again we skied down the valley, taking a chance to look up behind us at the proud route we had just completed.

Hidden Couloir

                From our vantage on the north face of Tazaghart, we saw another steep, narrow couloir on the opposite side of the valley.  It looked like it would be a go and we would attempt it the next day.  The next morning we woke to some extremely high winds and decided to wait a while in the morning to see if they would calm down.  Towards afternoon, the winds had still not died down and it looked as if we would just have to call this a rest day.  Luckily around 1:30, I went outside and saw that finally the winds had abated and we quickly got our gear together.   Happy we were able to make it out that afternoon, we made quick work of the couloir and were on top in about 2 hrs.  Being a south facing route, we were actually climbing in the sun for once.  The view on top was spectacular, mountains surrounded by the arid desert.  Since it was later in the day and with the sun hitting the route all day, the snow was heavy and slushy.  This made it even more energy consuming to make jump turns in the tight couloir.  Never the less, we skied down and only had one short section that was so narrow we had to side-step down.  At one point during the side stepping, I actually got my ski stuck between two rocks and had to reach down and use my hand to wiggle it free.  We skied back down to the refuge, feeling lucky we were able to get out that day despite the wind and the late start.

Booting the south facing couloir

                Having spent the last 5 nights at the Lepiney Refuge, we were ready to move on to the Toubkal Refuge in the adjacent valley.  We would have to traverse over a mountain pass and despite not having to carry all the food we had ate, our packs still seemed to be quite heavy.  A mix of skinning and booting finally brought us to the top of what was the first false pass.  Just as we were looking across the cwm at our route, we saw two large wild cats chasing each other around the slope opposite us.  They were absolutely sprinting up, down, and across the snow and rock covered face at an unbelievable speed.  They would then catch up to each other and one would take off, with the other following.  Then they would let out their loud cat cries that reverberated around the cwm.  We would later read that there are two species of cats that are found in the Toubkal region; the rare lynx and the even more rare Barbary Leopard.   From our vantage it was hard to tell what they were.  They looked to be larger than a lynx and if I were in the western US, I would have guessed they were mountain lions.  I’d like to think they were the Barbary Leopard, but I don’t think we will ever know.  With some trepidation we continued the traverse around the cwm knowing the cats were below us and could be on us in seconds.  Luckily, we didn’t see them again, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were watching us the whole time.  Finally, we surmounted the mountain pass and skied down to the Toubkal refuge.

South facing couloir

                We took a much needed rest day the following day and planned to climb Toubkal, the highest peak in Morocco, the next day.  Talking to a few climbers, it didn’t sound like there was much snow on Toubkal to ski and the next day that was confirmed within the first 20 minutes of our ascent.  We ended up ditching our skis low down on the route and made quick time up the peak, reaching the top in a little under two hours.  On top of the highest peak in northern Africa, we were afforded an amazing view of Morocco and the High Atlas Mountains.  We made quick time getting back down to the refuge and packed our things to head down to the town of Imlil.  We skied a little, walked a little, and then skied a little bit more down the trail until finally having to put both skis and boots on our back to walk down.  About halfway down, we came to a small village where the snow on the trail was completely gone and were able to hire a mule to carry our gear down the rest of the way.  Getting our gear carried was quite a luxury after about 9 days in the mountains.  We reached the mountain town of Imlil in late afternoon and were able to de-crustify with much needed hot showers and clean clothes.

Morocco Ski Mountaineering: The Approach

Morocco Ski Expedition: The Approach

With no mules able to get into the mountain refuges and not wanting to pay for porters, we knew that our loads were going to be heavy.  We tried to take as little as possible, but the food we brought such as fresh meat, potatoes, and veggies for tagine were going to weigh us down.  No matter, we were used to carrying heavy loads or so I thought.

Berber village of Oussem

The first day of our approach we got a ‘crack of noon ‘start due to a seemingly minor piece of equipment that actually can be a major problem if you don’t have it: sunscreen.  We had overlooked this piece of gear both in packing at home and in acquiring it in Marrakesh.  Ready to set out, we realized we didn’t have any and the combination of clear blue skies and snow for a week was going to wreak havoc on our faces.  None of the shops in Imlil had any either and the pharmacy was inconveniently closed for the day.   Apparently, the Moroccans were less than concerned about the health of my face than I was.  I ended up having to take a 17 km taxi trip to the town of Asni so that I could buy some stupid sunscreen.  I got some there and with my “moneymaker” safely slathered with lotion, we were ready to set off.

We were able to put our skis on and skin right out of town following a road past the village of Mizi.  The path that we chose ended up taking us through a walnut orchard on the slope of the valley.  Walnut trees are not that tall and our packs and all the stuff hanging off our packs snagged on seemingly every branch.  After a while, we rose above the orchard and were starting to feel the heat of the sun and the heavy packs.  Just then, we heard the screaming and laughing of young kids.  We came upon a group of them with little ill-fitting skis that they were taking turns walking up a short hill and skiing down.  We gave the kids a wave hello and continued on.  After seeing the children, we started following a mysterious skin track that someone was putting in above us.  When we reached the pass that we had intended to go over, we found about 15 young Moroccon guys with old skis and boots.  They were hiking up the hillside and skiing down.  Apparently, we weren’t the only backcountry skiers in the area.  After a little miscommunication with them, we started down and skied as well as you could with a 50+ lbs pack down to the village of Oussem where we needed to get in contact with the Lepiney Refuge hut keeper and let him know we would be heading up there the following day.

The Beast

Oussem is a small Berber village perched on the hillside, just above the bottom of the river gorge.  Most of the people in the village live a subsistence life and tend their sheep.  One of the first homes that we came to had 3 men sitting on the roof (due to the homes being on a steep hillside, often the homes are multi-layered and the roof of one layer is the terrace of another).  The 3 men spoke Arabic and Berber but absolutely no English.  We tried to use simple words and hand gestures to let them know we were trying to find the hutkeeper of the Lepiney Refuge.  With no success in that, we decided to use hand gestures letting them know we needed a place to stay for the night.  They had a little discussion amongst themselves and one of them told us to follow him.  He took us down the steep, winding footpath that led to his home.  It looked like this would be our accommodations for the evening.  Omar, we found out his name a bit later, sat us down in his main room and poured us mint tea, while bringing out some flat bread and olive oil to snack on.  This was the absolute best olive oil I had ever had.  Bryce and I who were starving, devoured the bread and olive oil.  Soon enough, a younger lady who apparently was a school teacher came into the home to help translate for us.  Unfortunately, she only spoke French and a little bit of English.  After a while, we were able to get across the idea that we needed to find the hut keeper and he was sent for.

Waiting

Omar let us into another room that we could hang out in and relax.  Just about dinner time the hutkeeper “Brian” showed up.  I doubt that was his given Berber name.  Brian was about 26 years old and was quite the dashing figure with an impressive mustache that any man would be proud of.  He lounged lavishly on the couch and did everything, including his tea pouring, with great flair.  I quickly dubbed him “Hollywood” or “Playboy”.  He spoke in decent broken English and told us that due to an injury to his knee and hip, he wouldn’t  be able to go up to the hut and instead would have his buddy go up for us.  Brian also stuck around for the couscous dinner Omar served us and we all chatted for a while.  We slept on couches in Omar’s living room.  In the morning before we set off, we came to find out that Omar was not quite showing us the Berber hospitality we had thought he was.  He wanted some payment for the food and the night in his home.  This was entirely reasonable, as we had tried to offer him some money the night before.  However, in the morning we were a little struck when he was not satisfied with the more than generous amount we had first given him.

Lepiney Refuge

We set off from Oussem in the morning, following Bryan through the maze of the village to another village called Tamsoult.  Despite a bum knee and hip, he set a blistering pace.  He left us at Tamsoult and we were on our own up to the hut.  After much drudgery with the packs and the afternoon sun, we reached the Lepiney Hut which of course was locked since the hutkeeper hadn’t arrived yet.  We hung out all afternoon waiting for Brian’s buddy, but no one came.  This was getting a bit alarming since we had no tents for shelter, but luckily there was a shed next to the refuge that was open and had a few dirty mattresses.  We cleared the snow from the shed and started to make it a little nicer just in case we’d have to spend the night in there.  As the sun started to set and the temperature plummeted, there was still no sign of a hut keeper.   We crawled into our sleeping bags in the shed and resigned ourselves to some cold peanut butter and honey sandwiches for dinner. 

Just as we were enjoying our cold dinner, I thought I heard a very faint noise outside.  We listened harder but assumed it had just been the wind.  Going back to eating, we heard it again louder.  This time realizing we had heard a person.  Bryce jumped up and put his boots on before heading outside.  There, he saw a headlamp coming towards us in the distance.  We yelled back at each other when he saw our headlamps, and we could tell he was wallowing through crotch deep snow.  We were elated that the hut keeper was finally coming to open up the refuge and put our skis on to go meet him.  When we got to him, we took his back and got his keys so we could open the refuge door.  Once inside, we started up some hot water to make tea for the hut keeper who looked obviously tired.

Finally, Abdul the hut keeper  walked through the door and the first thing he did was open up a bottle of Fanta and poured three glasses.  He slammed his glass of soda and offered the other two to us.  I’m not sure Fanta is what I reach for after wallowing through snow all day, but hey, whatever suits you.  Then we combined some of our food with his and he whipped up a delicious tagine, not showing the slightest bit of fatigue from his day.

Morocco Ski Expedition: Preparation

Morocco Ski Expedition: Preparation

Dates and Apricots for sale

                While still in Marrakesh we had to run a few errands to get some food before heading up into the mountains.  We decided against going to a big supermarket in town and instead visited the local markets around our hotel.  Our idea was to buy the kind of things such as veggies and meat that we could make our own tagine with, along with some snack stuff for lunches.  The first thing we bought from the market was veggies from a small stand.  We purchased potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and onions.  The man at the stand weighed ever thing with his little scale and we paid.  He seemed a bit surprised to be selling so much produce to a couple white guys, but didn’t seem to mind overall.  Next up, we needed some spices, so we headed to the spice shop and purchased some paprika, coriander, cumin, and curry.  We weren’t entirely sure which spices we would need but this seemed like a pretty good assortment.   Lastly, that evening we bought some dates, walnuts, and figs.  The dates were absolutely delicious were almost like candy.  We tried to reframe from eating the whole bag in one sitting as we were a little scared what might happen if we downed all that fiber in one sitting.

                The next morning we woke up and still had a little shopping to do.  We needed some meat for our tagine.  We first visited the lamb guy.  In his little shop he had some lamb hanging there and we told him in some broken English that we wanted some.  He hacked off about 1 ½ kilos and we were almost done with the shopping.  Our last stop was to get some chicken and this is when things got interesting.  The day before we had stumbled upon the guys with live chickens who were butchering them for the local customers.  After seeing this, we knew exactly where we had to go for our chicken.  The chicken butcher was located in an alleyway and on one side the guy had a cage full of live chickens and he throws the chickens across the alleyway to the guy who actually butchers it.  The guy with the live chickens thought we were there to just watch the show as we had the day before and offered us some tea.  We sipped the tea he offered and told him we wanted a chicken.  A look of surprise came across his face and he tried to make sure we wanted one that would be butchered.  Of course we wanted one to butcher, what were we going to do?  Buy one and let free on the streets of Marrakesh?  He took one out of the cage we gave a nod that it looked good. He took the chicken and threw it across the alleyway to the butcher.  With a big grin on his face and gleam in his eye, he took the chicken between his legs, lifted it’s little throat up and slit it in one clean motion.  He then plucked the feathers and chopped it into manageable pieces for us.  Not exactly how they operate at Alberstons.  Now that we had our provisions we were able to head up to the mountains.

Lamb

                We hailed a taxi on the Djeema el-Fna square for $40 and started the 2 hour drive up to the mountain town of Imlil.  We stayed that night at the Hotel Soleil that had been recommended to me by a guy named Boris, who I found via the internet and Facebook and had been pumping for information on where we would be going in the High Atlas Mountains.  Low and behold, who do I meet in the hotel? That’s right, Boris, who I had been corresponding via Facebook…small world! 

                We inquired around town about the use of mules to carry our stuff into the Lepiney hut where we had planned to stay, but everyone told us that the snow would be too deep to get mules in there.  Well damn, just a few weeks ago we were worried that there might not even be any snow and now there was too much snow to get the mules in.  The folks around town said that porters could take our stuff into the refuge, but with what they were telling us about snow conditions and prices being more for porters we decided against that.  I could just see the porters wallowing in the snow and demanding more money to take our gear in.  We tried to slim our gear down as much as possible but it was still going to weigh over 50lbs.  Along with that, I had only brought my small ski pack so I had all kinds of things hanging off of it.  However, we were optimistic.   I mean, we carry heavy stuff around as part of our job description.  How hard could it be?  We were soon to find out.

Mountain town of Imlil

Morocco Ski Mountaineering

Morocco Ski Mountaineering: Arriving in Marrakech

                After 25 hours of travel, we have finally arrived in Marrakech, Morocco.  We had a driver meet us at the airport and shuttle us to our hotel.  Once we got ourselves and all of our baggage situated in the room, we headed out onto the streets of Marrakech.   The main open-air market, named the Djemaa el-Fna, is only a few minutes from our hotel and was the first place we checked out.  During the day time there is all sorts of craziness going on in the market.  There is everything from snake charmers, to guys with monkeys, to guys in traditional dress doing traditional songs and dances.  We strolled around the open markets for a while before venturing into the winding alleyway of the souqs.  You can purchase pretty much anything in the souqs from tourist trinkets, to food items, and more than a few shady characters asking if we wanted to buy some hash.  Another fun pastime in the narrow, winding alley ways is the dodging of other pedestrians, bicyclists, motorbikes, and the occasional mule drawn carriage.  Walking through the souqs is truly a feast for the senses; food cooking, music playing, people talking, motor bikes whizzing by with their smell of exhaust fumes, mules clomping by.

                It has also been raining quite a bit in the day and half that we have been here.  However, this is a good thing for us, as rain down here in the city means that it is probably snowing up high in the mountains.  We have come to Morocco to climb and ski mountains.  I’m not sure skiing mountains is the first thing that comes to most people’s mind when they think of Morocco.  However, the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco look amazing and go up to an elevation of over 13,ooo ft.  We just hope there is plenty of snow up there to be able to ski down these peaks.  The plan is simple: arrive in Marrakech, take a taxi to the small mountain town of Imlil 2 ½ hours away, hire a mule to take our gear into the Lepiney Refuge, climb steep couloirs, and ski down them.

                We have also ventured to the Djemaa el-Fna in the evenings as well.  The open market turns in to something entirely different at night.  Food stalls are lined up and the smell of delicious Moroccan food fills the air.  There is a hustle and bustle surrounding the stalls and every food proprietor is trying to get you to sit at one of their tables.  We even passed a few of the stalls that had goat’s heads and brains prominently displayed.  Apparently, the head and the brain are quite the delicacy.  I tried to snap a few pictures of the heads and brains, but just like everything around here, that came with a price.  We passed on those and instead dined on some tasty tagine and couscous.  The food thus far has been amazing.

                Tomorrow we head out to the mountain town of Imlil where we will spend the night and arrange a mule to take our gear up the Refuge.  Hopefully, these storms have laid down a fresh layer of powder for our first turns in Africa.

First Attempts With the New Camera