Atlas Mountains: Kasbah du Toubkal

Part Three of the Adventures in Morocco series is our adventures in the Atlas Mountains. After Fes, we took the quite spiffy train to Marrakech, and caught our hour long taxi ride to Imlil, our jumping off point. I highly recommend the train - on the European level of cleanliness, space, available snacks, and timeliness.

We based ourselves at the truly spectacular Kasbah du Toubkal, a short hike up the hill from Imlil. This place is pretty great - it was converted from the ruins of a nobleman's Kasbah by a joint British-Berber partnership and is all warm and fuzzy on the environmental, empowering the locals scale. Plus it's swank. Only downside is that you have to pay in advance and it's nonrefundable, which wreaked some havoc on our rescheduled travel plans. But still worth it in the end.

So, we arrive in Imlil, a little backpacker town chock full of people trying to sell you things, and met up with our donkey guy for the walk up the hill. Cars can't get to the Kasbah, so they put your bags on a donkey (and you, if you want) and you hike your way up. Not too bad of a hike, but I will admit to being both entertained and mildly embarrassed by our black rolling bags on the donkey.

So you arrive at the gate to the Kasbah and enter this central courtyard, filled with flowers. The rooms are arranged in several buildings around the compound, and there are various terraces for meals and lounging, plus a hammam (traditional bath) and a dining room. Our first few nights we had a room in the tower (Taferka) that looked up into the mountains on one side and down into the courtyard on the other. Our last night, post-hike, we had a room with a terrace overlooking the river valley (Amadin). Both were great. The Kasbah also has communal rooms for groups or lower budget hikers, which gives the place a nice, friendly vibe. Plus they give you your own djellabahs (traditional Moroccan hooded robes, think Obi Wan Kanobi in Star Wars) to wear when it's cold. Pretty entertaining.

So the centerpiece of our stay at the Kasbah was a hike of Jbel Toubkal (or Mount Toubkal), the highest mountain in North Africa, coming in around 14,000 feet. So the plan was to spend the first day lounging and then we set off the next day for our two day hike, and then left the following day. The lounging was superb. We took advantage of the various terraces, read some, wrote some, took a walk to the village, and pretty much gazed at the mountains.

The food was good, but still heavy on the chicken tagine and couscous. Each meal is set, so there's little choice, but the settings are great. Breakfast and lunch are on the terraces and dinner is in the very atmospheric dining room, filled with candles and low tables and cushions. Because the Berbers do not drink, the Kasbah is BYO, but they have no problem with you having your own wine with dinner. They were very kind and even produced a birthday cake filled with candles upon request.

So, after the lounging, it was time for hiking. Admittedly, this is rather high end hiking. We had our guide, Mustaffa, who was knowledgeable and entertaining, but not overly solicitous, along with two donkeys and corresponding men to carry all our stuff. These guys also cooked our meals, pitched our tent, the whole thing. Pretty nice.

So off we went into the hills. We hiked by the picturesque neighboring village of Aroumd, across the river valley devastated by a flash flood some years earlier, and up the mountains to the shrine and little town of Sidi Chamrouch. This place was a shrine to the equivalent of a saint in the local Berber religion. Apparently most Berbers, although Muslim, also follow some of the traditional religious customs. We couldn't actually cross the little bridge to the shrine, but we could gaze on it from a snack shop above. Mostly, it looked like a huge, white rock. Together with the cluster of shops for hikers down below, and the group of rather high kids camping and playing their drums downstream, it was a pretty backpacker scene. So after a rest, off we went up the mountain valley.

Another hour of hiking later, we happened onto the lunch location, which was rather spectacular. Our various donkeys, along with those of another couple off on the same hike, had been unloaded to create a little restaurant on the mountain. We had a rug and a table and chairs and mats for lounging and full meal. Pretty great. So we ate and rested and gazed at the clouds.

One more stretch of hiking and we made it to the base camp for the summit, formerly known as Neltner Hut. This is a hostel for people to stay in, and is surrounded by a slew of tents, some permanently set up like little hotels, and some for individual groups. So as our tents were pitched for us (pretty tough on us), we checked out the hut and watched the fog roll in. It was pretty cold by dusk, and by the time dinner rolled around, I had literally every piece of clothing in the campsite on.

Once again, we had a swank dinner set up in our "dining tent" and then we tackled what would become the ongoing issue of the hike: my boots. Apparently my boots were old and at some point in the hike, the soles started to come off. Literally off the boot. So Mustaffa decided that there was no way I was going up the mountain like that, and after we couldn't devise a way to fix the boots, Mohammed, the donkey guy, lent me his shoes for the summit hike the next morning. Lots of drama.

So 4:00 the next morning we were roused from our tent and headed up the mountain in the dark. For unclear reasons, Mustaffa decided we should charge up the mountain to pass a big group ahead of us. After it became very clear that this approach was utterly inconsistent with my body's ability to process oxygen at that time, we slowed it down a bit. From there it was a long four hour trudge through a lot of rocks up the mountain. The summit was freezing but spectacular and Mustaffa even brought us a mini champagne bottle to celebrate. After a rest and a snack, we headed down.

The trip down Toubkal was quick - maybe two hours - but rather challenging as the whole top of the mountain is basically a big scree field, i.e. field of loose rocks. So you basically have no secure footing and the best approach is to half run, half ski down down the thing. So you get down pretty quickly, but you spend a fair amount of time on your ass. And have a lot of bruises the next day. But down we went, with me periodically reminding Mike that summitting mountains is not a relaxing vacation choice when you both run out of time to do any kind of training beforehand.

After making it back to base camp, we had a little lunch, I gratefully gave Mohammed his shoes back, and we were on our way. The rest of the hike back to the Kasbah was an easy gradual downhill, but went extremely slow due to my utterly useless boots. We made several stops along the way to try various repairs. First we tried to tie the soles on with my shoelaces. Then we tried to do the same with some twine we found on the side of the trail. Then we stopped at a little shack, where they made nails out of wire, and tried to nail the soles back on. Then we stopped in Sidi Chamrouch and devised a wire frame that kept the soles on. Pretty impressive efforts, and sure made me feel like the dumb American with her old boots. Which went promptly in the garbage once I got all the wires off. Our last night was rather tragic, as Mike spent the whole night ill, but we enjoyed our cleanliness and headed to Marrakech the next morning.

Some general admonitions about the Toubkal area:

If you're choosing between Kasbah du Toubkal and Kasbah Agafay (the Richard Branson property), definitely choose Toubkal. The setting is exponentially more spectacular and way better value. Plus, all you're missing out on is a tennis court (who wants to play tennis in the Atlas mountains anyway?) and the price.

If you're going to hike on your own out of Imlil, it's very doable as the trails are well-laid and there are little snack shops and stuff along the way. I would not, however, hike Jbel Toubkal on your own - there's barely a path and you can make some seriously dangerous route miscalculations on the rocks.

I'm not sure I would necessarily choose the Toubkal summit over other hikes from the Kasbah. There are a bunch of options for day and multi-day hikes, including some with overnights at the Kasbah's mountain lodge further into the hills. I suspect that heading over the ranges may be just as spectacular, and less strenuous, than the path to the summit.

Definitely allow lounging time. The property itself is spectacular and I wish we'd spent a few more days there.