For a long weekend you’ll never forget, North Africa’s highest peak is easier to reach than you’d think, says Henry Wismayer

It’s a straightforward little trip. Fly to another continent, climb a mountain three times the size of Ben Nevis, celebrate over a meal in one of the world’s great human theatres, then fly home, all in three days and all for less than it costs to get drunk on a night out in central London.

Well, no. Not for this mountain you don’t. Standing at 4,167m above sea level, Jebel Toubkal is the highest peak in North Africa. But, for much of the year, you don’t need to be a sinewy, ice-axe wielding cliff-hanger to get to the top. Better still, the small town of Imlil, the principal gateway to Toubkal National Park – in which this mountain resides – is just 60km from that most accessible of Moroccan cities, Marrakesh. So you won’t need to eat up lots of holiday allocation in pursuit of mountaineering glory – a long weekend is all it takes.

The Toubkal route leaves Imlil to the south, snaking uphill through terraced fields towards the neighbouring town of Aroumd, then across the wide, boulder-strewn floodplain before joining a well-trodden footpath that winds its way up the east side of the Mizane valley.

Five kilometres along the path you arrive at the hamlet of Sidi Chamharouch, the first milestone and last settlement on the route. Once you’ve negotiated the gauntlet of ebullient stallholders desperately hawking an assortment of fabric and trinkets, the area by the small shrine that lends the village its name is a pleasant place to get out of the sun, and take stock over a pot or two of mint tea.

In stark contrast to the mayhem of the city down the road, time in the High Atlas mountains appears to stand still. Apart from the money coming in from tourism, the locals – most of them of the ancient Berber tribe – rely on subsistence agriculture to put food on the table. The children take goats out to pasture in the morning before going to school, the only mode of transport beyond the Imlil road is the donkey, and no-one’s heard of Facebook.

If you ignore the radio masts and the fact that your guide will probably have a mobile phone large enough to grace the briefcase of any self-respecting 1990s yuppie, you could be in the age of Sultan Idris I. It’s this timeless exoticism – evoked most powerfully when the muezzin’s call to prayer reverberates down the valley – that makes the High Atlas mountains such a draw.

However, if you’re climbing the big one expect your enjoyment to be slightly diluted by the burning inside your leg muscles. Jebel Toubkal is a non-technical climb, and outside the winter months you don’t need to know your crampons from your pitons to get to the top. But, unless you were born and raised on the slopes of an Alp, climbing 1,500m in a day MP3 players. Pertinent tunes such as U2’s Elevation or Led Zep’s Misty Mountain Hop are particularly energising, but try not to sing along too loudly. You’d feel very foolish (not to mention quite possibly dead) if your jolly rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Climb Every Mountain started an avalanche.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 4:59 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.