Climbing Mt Toubcal
This is a hard one to write objectively.
My feelings about the climb changed many times during the day.
We started at 5.45am so that we could finish early afternoon as the mountain gets more treacherous later in the day. Mahomed led and one of the muleteers, Lasheed, brought up the rear. Thirty minutes in we lost one of our party when she decided it would be to hard and returned to camp assisted by Lasheed. To our amazement Lasheed caught up to us again about half and hour later.
During the next hour I considered returning myself more than once. We crossed several snowfields that were frozen and so turned to rock hard ice. The slope was somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees and so a slip would send us sliding at least 100 metres to the rocks below. I held out no hope of stopping myself with my walking poles. Guess what! no one slipped!.
The remaining walk was rocky and steep with many sections of loose scree where we had to walk sideways for maximum grip. Our climb was 900 metres from our tents at basecamp to the peak at 4167 metres. After about 4hrs we reached a narrow plateau and stopped for some food. Mahomed warned us against going to close to one side as it was a sheer drop of several hundred metres. We could see for many miles in every direction and the summit loomed above us as a very steep rocky point with a narrow approach. At this point I wanted to be anywhere else. We pressed on after a 20min break and reached the top fairly uneventfully nearly an hour later.
The point was wide and safe and ,with the clear sky,the view was amazing. We could see 360 degrees of mountain ranges spreading into the distance.
The climb down was less stressful as I realised there were no cliffs to traverse and we expected the ice to have turned to soft snow (it had!). The decent did however take us nearly 4 hrs of very careful walking as the slope made a slip possible with nearly every step. We all slid over and got dirty and wet trouser bottoms, but arrived safely to camp. This very tired trekker decided he did not need to add any more peaks to his bucket list.
My feelings about the climb changed many times during the day.
We started at 5.45am so that we could finish early afternoon as the mountain gets more treacherous later in the day. Mahomed led and one of the muleteers, Lasheed, brought up the rear. Thirty minutes in we lost one of our party when she decided it would be to hard and returned to camp assisted by Lasheed. To our amazement Lasheed caught up to us again about half and hour later.
During the next hour I considered returning myself more than once. We crossed several snowfields that were frozen and so turned to rock hard ice. The slope was somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees and so a slip would send us sliding at least 100 metres to the rocks below. I held out no hope of stopping myself with my walking poles. Guess what! no one slipped!.
The remaining walk was rocky and steep with many sections of loose scree where we had to walk sideways for maximum grip. Our climb was 900 metres from our tents at basecamp to the peak at 4167 metres. After about 4hrs we reached a narrow plateau and stopped for some food. Mahomed warned us against going to close to one side as it was a sheer drop of several hundred metres. We could see for many miles in every direction and the summit loomed above us as a very steep rocky point with a narrow approach. At this point I wanted to be anywhere else. We pressed on after a 20min break and reached the top fairly uneventfully nearly an hour later.
The point was wide and safe and ,with the clear sky,the view was amazing. We could see 360 degrees of mountain ranges spreading into the distance.
The climb down was less stressful as I realised there were no cliffs to traverse and we expected the ice to have turned to soft snow (it had!). The decent did however take us nearly 4 hrs of very careful walking as the slope made a slip possible with nearly every step. We all slid over and got dirty and wet trouser bottoms, but arrived safely to camp. This very tired trekker decided he did not need to add any more peaks to his bucket list.
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