Awesome Trails and Weird Winds
Planning trails from home can be risky, but sometimes it pays off.
https://youtube.com/shorts/9FEmjr1Rokw?is=BaIvE630JxKuOplS
Before leaving for Morocco I spent hours researching trails I might take, looking for the lesser travelled but hopefully picturesque. There are risks to this strategy, as I have now discovered twice on this trip. Whatever you see on maps, be it Google Earth or Gaia the situation on the ground is often different.
Today I had both the sublime and the scary. After camping high up in the mountains I woke in the clouds after a cold damp night. Resuming yesterday’s trail amongst the stunted cypresses and cedars of the Atlas Mountains. I was still at around 2000 metres.
I descended and made my way on the road to the start of today’s trail, the first section was through a flat plains of dried sandy mud, and rocks, culminating in an extinct volcano. The scenery whilst very different from yesterday was still spectacular, the driving was not challenging at all and I made good progress.
By lunchtime I had reached the end of the trail so I decided to start the next one. I had originally planned one trail for each day but I wasn’t ready to stop. The second trail was one I had been looking forward to, it included a lesser known narrow gorge, driving up the riverbed. The first part of this trail however did not go to plan. After just a few kilometres of rough rocky track I came upon a small village, I continued towards the village and realised that I was no longer following my GPX route which wanted to take me to the South of the village. The track I was on went to the North.
After back tracking a few hundred metres I found the track I should have been on, it looked like it hadn’t been driven in a while - a warning sign. I continued anyway and soon came upon a dried out river bed crossing - there are thousands of these in Morocco, so no surprise there. The trail dropped down into the river and then back out the other side. The exit looked sketchy to say the least, steep, washed out and seriously off camber. Thinking of the YouTube views I decided to take it on..
The entry was easy, the exit was not. A large boulder embedded in the loose gravel that made up the bank meant that I had to keep high and right, but the camber was sliding the whole car left. Engaging the low range and diff lock I had a go at getting up, I made it first time, the prickle of adrenalin and satisfaction was short lived however as 100 metres further I came upon a dead end.
A stop to re-check the maps and the sickening realisation that I was going to have to descend the sketchy climb that I had just done. My scrabbling tyres had chewed out the track on the way up, now it looked worse, way worse.
With no other option I pressed on. 1st gear low, inching forward, the side angle was not nice, the car sliding to the right which would put me right on top of the boulder that was still jutting out towards the bottom of the slope. Inch by inch I made my way down, the angle feeling worse and worse.
Just as I thought I was getting to the tipping point, my front wheel found the boulder which made the angle feel better at least. After climbing over that I dropped down hard and heard the metallic clang of the boulder on the rock slider. Thankfully the boulder was on the outside of the slider - preventing me from rolling over, there was a jarring screech of metal on rock as I scraped along until the rear tyre found the rock and climbed over too. Then a bang as the rear bumper connected with the rock. But I was down. Safe and relatively unscathed.
Travelling alone I should really be more careful.
Back on tarmac for a few more miles and then I came to the start of the gorge. There are several spectacular gorges in Morocco, some like the Todra and Dades Gorges now have decent roads through them. Through others such as this one the road is simply the riverbed. Recent heavy rains had completely re-sculpted the trail, i.e. there wasn’t one. I was clearly going to be the first car through.
The adrenaline from my earlier mishap returned, should I attempt this?
In for a penny I pressed on. What followed was probably the most fun trail I have ever driven. Choose your own adventure. With no tracks to follow I picked my way through the gorge, avoiding the biggest rocks and deepest washouts listening to the crunching of the stones under the tyres.
The walls of the gorge were hundreds of feet high, at some points it narrowed to just a couple of car widths, I didn’t meet any other cars just a couple of Berbers on horseback and an old man on a motorbike picking his way through the stones. I took my time and enjoyed the experience. Stopping at one point to sit on a rock and wash my feet in what remained of the recent rains - a small stream now, I could tell it had been a torrent recently.
After completing the gorge track I made my way by road to a camp site i found on Google Maps. I made the mistake of following Google to get there. Google just doesn’t work here, I should have studied the route more closely. I ended up driving down tiny streets in a village and then down a narrow path which tightened and tightened. Eventually I arrived at a house, I spoke with the man who helped me find where I was looking for.
The campsite is run by an extended family, Icham the owner welcomed me with the obligatory, mint tea, bread and cakes, olive oil and honey from his own bees that his father keeps. I can see the hives across the river from here. I setup the tent and noticed how windy it was. Thinking i could be in for a rough night I checked the weather forecast. Winds were due to die down at 8.
After a delicious tagine prepared by the family I returned to the tent, the wind was still an issue. The weirdest thing, one minute there was no wind at all, dead calm, the next about 90 seconds of very strong gusts which felt like they could rip the tent apart. Then calm again. I have never experienced a wind like that, I don’t understand the physics of how it can even happen. Normally theres a steady wind with gusts in the same direction, but from zero to gale force and then to zero again i have never experienced. - If you know how this happens let me know -
I took up Icham’s offer of a room in the house, I couldn’t take the chance of a random gust breaking the tent.
I’m still there now, taking a day off, to file some footage, upload a couple of YouTube shorts and write this of course.
My office
Just as I was about to publish this article, my MacBook died. I’ve been on the phone to apple for an hour. It seems that battery is dead. It’s only 6 months old! This is a massive problem for me, I have no way of transferring files from the camera SD cards to the hard drives that I brought now. I could theoretically buy an adapter somewhere and load them onto the iPad and then onto ICloud if I buy some more space, or maybe visit internet cafe’s along the way and try and transfer onto my hard drive there.
Such a pain in the arse!