Toubkal and the million steps uphill.

Our guides from Toubkal Trekking came to pick us up from our apartment in Marrakech at 8.30 in the morning. It was going to be a one and a half hour long drive up to Imlil that's located 1740 meters above sea level. From Imlil it was going to be a long hike up to the refuge, where we were going to spend the first night acclimatizing to the high altitude. The refuge itself is located 3207 meters above sea level, and trust me, there you will start to feel the effects of less air going through your lungs.

We arrived to Imlil at around 11 o'clock. After some chit-chat and a couple of glasses of mint tea, also known as Berber whiskey, we started our long ascent up to the refuge with our guide Mohammed. From the start it seemed to be an easy hike, but as soon as the altitude started kicking in, we felt the effects of the lowering level of oxygen. I also have to mention that the hike is 18 kilometers long and the total change in elevation is around 1500 meters. The only good thing that comes to my mind about the hike is that we had mules to carry our skis and all the heavy stuff. Without the mules, I can't say for sure that I would have made it to the refuge. 

We arrived at the refuge totally exhausted, after six long hours of putting one foot in front of the other. The Refuge de Toubkal is owned by a French ski club called C.A.F. and it has plenty of room for many mountaineers and skiers. You can bring your own food, but because of the carrying and everything, it is wise to buy it from the refuge. There is also another refuge situated next to Refuge de Toubkal, called Les Mouflouns de Toubkal. It's for sale, though, because apparently they charge too much and people prefer to use the cheaper one next to it, I wonder why. So if you have the million dollars it costs, then go ahead and buy yourself a nice mountain home from the High Atlas Mountains. 

After two warm meals cooked by our own chef (for 10 euros per day) and some Berber whiskey, it was time for us to hit the hay, because next morning was due to be the day we got to Mount Toubkal. One more thing to be mentioned is that at Toubkal you kind of feel like a true mountaineer with your own chefs, mules and all. You really could think that the mountain is 8000+ meters high, because of all the preparation and everything.

The morning came, and after breakfast at around 9 o'clock we put our skis on and slowly started skiing up from the mountain's base. After maybe 50 meters my problems started. My skis were too slippery to grab onto the icy surface and I had to change into crampons, the spikes you can attach to your ski boots, to continue. Well, after 5 meters I kicked the head spikes of the crampon into my pants' cuff, tumbled and hit my knee really hard into a stone-hard block of ice. This starts to feel great, I thought. After a rough start, the hike finally started going smoothly as long as I remembered to keep an eye on the cuffs of my pants and the crampons. 

At around 11 o'clock we had reached the beginning of the huge gully on the mountain's west side that's maybe 300 meters above the refuge. From this point on, the hike eases a little and we decided to leave our skis and trekkers here, because it looked like it was faster to go with just the crampons. The first part at this point is maybe 30 degrees steep and after that it flattens into maybe 15 degrees of flat slope that leads into a huge bowl's base. The gully ending into this bowl is maybe a kilometer long and around 100 to 250 meters wide. We had a nice break at the gully's end and checked for some lines to ski in the bowl, and took guiding pictures for later purposes. 

After the break, the really hard part started. At the altitude of 3500+ meters, the oxygen level is only two thirds of what it is at sea level. So, the hiking becomes really hard. You can only go a few meters before you have to have a short break or you feel like your lungs are about to explode.

On the mountains you kind of start thinking stuff differently, which I think might be the altitude doing this. We started talking about philosophic stuff, and Blumi came up with a deep thought that when you're hiking 'you have to take every step and not one step can be missed' and this sort of stuff.

But yeah, from the bowl you hike up to a ridge that will take you the last 400 meters of vertical to the summit of Mt. Toubkal. The last few hundred meters felt like forever. We were all so tired when we got to the summit. The name Toubkal means BIG, and that pretty much really speaks for the mountain's character. It really is a big mountain with all its dangers. The feeling when we got to the top, how can I describe it. It was unbelievable. From the top you can see all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and on the other side is the Sahara-desert. We took a bunch of pictures and filmed some shots and after maybe a half an hour of laughing and joyful moments it was time to start heading down.

The summit of Toubkal wasn't covered in snow for some reason. The snow ended  maybe 200 meters before the summit, and so we had to walk down for quite a while to get to our skis. As I wrote earlier, when we were hiking up, we took some guiding photos of the lines, and this is where we put them into use. It is so much easier to head for your starting point when you have pictures with landmarks to look at. 

Blumi was the first to ski down the couloir we had picked. It was quite narrow from the start, but it widens after 100 meters. After the couloir, you have an open field for a few hundred meters, before diving into another couloir of maybe 150 meters long. The rest of the line was just plain field with some rocks in it. Blumi went quite fast, but the snow seemed fine, so next when it was my turn to ski, I decided to do the same. Surprise, I thought, when the snow wasn't the kind I was hoping for. Mountaineers use the same couloir to hike up the mountain, so the snow was packed with their foot steps. After the couloir, the snow changed into nice and soft spring snow and the fun part began. Big turns and maximum speed as one guide in Chamonix, France once said. Well, not really, but good skiing in full control anyway. Finally, it was Ape's turn and he went for a little different line than me and Blumi. We filmed him from the bottom and when we had all gotten down, all the struggling we had hiking up seemed to be forgotten. The snow was great, and it was the first real line for the year. As our guide probably thought first that we are just some idiots who are going to kill themselves by skiing the bowl, he was overwhelmed to see how we skied it.

After plenty of high fives and discussion about how everyone skied, we started heading towards the refuge. From the bottom of the bowl, down to the end of gully, the skiing is easy and fun. We just went for it as a group and had the best time. The last part from the gully's end is kind of sketchy, because of the icy snow. It is, once again, a no-fall zone with the pointy rocks and the nicely sliding ice. After this death zone, we finally got to the bottom of the mountain and skied back down to the refuge. 

The good thing about having your own cook is that you have a warm meal waiting for you when you get down from the mountain, and you can just sit on the table and enjoy. The rest of the evening went stretching in front of the fireplace and reading some really good trekking magazines from Scotland. The refuge is also a nice place to share stories due to the big variety of people. We met some really nice people, including a Canadian guy travelling alone around Morocco, one big Dutch guy with funny stories, and two crazy Moroccan guys who almost got themselves into a heap of trouble by starting their descent too late from the summit, just to mention a few.

Next morning, when me and Blumi decided to stay in bed, Ape decided to go for a solo hike to this one big couloir next to the refuge. The couloir was maybe 700-800 meters high and he hiked it in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Ape seems to be in pretty nice fit.

Once he got back from his trip, it was time for us to head back down to Imlil and to Marrakech. I have to say that hiking down the path to Imlil felt like flying, compared to the day when we came up the same path to the refuge. The only sad part was that I somehow lost my headphones on our way down, damn it. 

In Imlil the guys were already waiting for us with Berber whiskey and cookies, and after we had paid for our trip, we started packing the minibus that was going to take us back to Marrakech. And if you thought that we are yuppies because of all the mules, cook and everything, this is probably the part where I can say the price of the trip. All included, with three meals, mules, guides, Sherpas and two nights at the refuge – 300 euros per person. Not bad if you consider what the price includes.

We got back to Marrakech and checked into a nice small hotel, which, by the way, was also arranged by just one phone call from the owner of the Toubkal Trekking. The evening in Marrakech went easy and we basically just wondered around the city and checked one more time what the market square had to offer. After that, it was good night before the next day's ride to Casablanca.