26 June to 4 July 2001

What follows is a short daily account of my High Atlas Mountains trek.  Words and photographs cannot capture what I experienced during the trek but, hopefully, it will be of interest to you the reader.
My apologies for the quality of some of the photographs.  I had to strike a balance between resolution settings when taking the photos, and jpeg compression during editing to provide a reasonable down load time.  Also, my camera date decided, on two occasions, to reset to 1999 ...... so, the date stamp on some photographs is incorrect. 

The Start

After a stopover at Tangiers, followed by an aircraft transfer at Casablanca, we arrived in Marrakesh around midnight. Neil, our Travelbag tour guide, met us at the airport and transported us to the Hotel Facauld. We had a short introduction to the rest of the group before retiring to bed for what should have been a good nights sleep. Unfortunately, Lee and I had noisy birds (I think pigeons) ‘living’ in the air-conditioning unit, coupled with the sound of passing traffic and ‘chatting’ people. Not a good combination for peaceful sleeping!

We started the day with a leisurely breakfast at 9:00am, then met on the rooftop terrace where Neil gave us our trek brief.  This also gave us another opportunity to chat to other group members.

Meet the Group

The briefing over, we departed at 11:00am by minibus for the village of Imlil (1740m/5707ft) where, on arrival at 12:30pm, we had lunch. We then had a 45 min walk from Imlil to our first Gité in the small village of Aremd (1960m/6370ft). The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the sun ..... with a very tasty glass of wine.

Our first meal, dinner prepared by our Berber cook, was excellent. This high standard of cooking continued throughout the trek, an amazing feat considering the conditions and equipment available to them.

Sunday and Monday was spent at Aremd, with the Monday being used for an acclimatisation walk to a mountain waterfall.  Not a long walk ...... but a steepish path of loose rock and a temperature of 36° C made it very tiring!

After a ‘leisurely’ start to the holiday, it was time to start the serious trekking. So, Tuesday saw the arrival of our Muleteers and departure for the first leg of our High Atlas Mountains circuit.