Mountaineering in the Moroccan High Atlas. Des Clark

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      On Akioud's north-north-west ridge in autumn (Route 20)

Visas and Permits

      EU, other European, Australian, Canadian and USA passport holders do not need a visa. Passports are stamped for a 90-day stay on arrival. South African passport holders do require a visa. Other nationalities should check with their relevant embassy, consulate or on line. If you are intending to stay more than 90 days, you will either need to get authorisation from a police station or exit to Spain and then re-enter after a period of a few days. This can often be the easier option, and is one sure way of seeing the country as you travel north to Tangier. Note that although the cities of Ceuta and Melilla are legally Spanish, the Moroccan border guards take very unkindly to people exiting and then re-entering from these enclaves.

      Although they have been suggested, there are no permits or official trekking fees to be negotiated for the High Atlas. The only tax is one charged by your accommodation provider, but this is often included in the stated price and you will not see any extras charged as such. Long may this situation continue.

Planning and Maps

      As for all mountain trips, planning is vital before you leave your home country. There is a world of difference, however, between planning an excursion to the High Atlas and the Alps, where you can expect reliable travel timetables, the presence of hut guardians, accurate avalanche warnings and weather forecasts, and easily available high quality maps. In addition, other than in the developing Toubkal and Mgoun regions, in the High Atlas there is little in the way of mountaineering tradition or developed trekking routes such as one encounters in many parts of the Himalaya and in some parts of the Andes, for instance. Easy access from Europe can belie the fact that the High Atlas is a range of mountains still largely undeveloped for climbing or trekking, apart from in those areas already mentioned.

      Although all the High Atlas has been mapped by the French at both 1:50,000 and 1:100,000 scale, the maps are difficult to get hold of. Exceptions to this are a set of four maps at 1:100,000 scale for the region around Toubkal.

      There is a Spanish 1:50,000 (Orientazion) map of the Toubkal area (without any cliff markings whatsoever!) and a 1:100,000 sketch-type map of the Mgoun massif published by West Col.

      There is also a series of Russian maps at 1:100,000, but all the place names are in Cyrillic. In addition there is a series of 1:160,000 scale maps based on another Russian survey published by EWP, but these are difficult to work off to any degree of accuracy due to their scale. However, they do give an overall impression of an area.

      On the whole, the French 1:50,000 series is the most reliable for the whole range, but casual visitors stand almost no chance of obtaining copies as access to them is, in theory, restricted to the military. In some gites and CAF refuges there is often a single map for the local area on public display, but over time these maps have faded, and so trying to pick out contour detail is often impossible.