Morocco to the Max
The path was easy walking, and I kept bugging Abdul: Wasn’t there a harder way? Maybe we could bushwhack around that ridge, just to see what’s there? He smiled and indulged me as we pointlessly clambered off the trail above Chamharouch, a Sufi shrine. It wasn’t often a client wanted things tougher.
Around noon, as we neared our day’s goal, a hut-cum-hostel run by Club Alpin Français, the day’s sweaty heat suddenly sank into a flinty chill. The temperature dropped thirty degrees in minutes. Black clouds broke from their perch above the mountaintops and rolled into the valley like tumbleweeds. We put on rain gear as the storm slouched slowly our way. Then, hail. Ice the size of shooter marbles shotgunned us. A mule driver wearing a denim Von Dutch jacket over a traditional djellaba hid behind his complaining charge. I yanked my hood down, protecting my eyes. We reached the shelter in a rash, wet charge. Beware the caprice of mountains.
That night, we shared a small room of naked concrete walls with a couple from Catalonia and five merry Moroccan soldiers. The soldiers were a mountain search-and-rescue unit who quickly adopted us foreigners into their fold. We all scooped dinner from a massive mutton-and-vegetable tagine as tides of Spanish, Arabic, English, and French washed across the narrow wooden table. Everything was shared, from the ubiquitous round bread to the single water glass. A barrel of a man with a cherub’s face, the group’s leader, whom everyone called El Capitán, averted official eyes when his falcon-nosed sergeant whisked a verboten bottle of nameless vodka from a rucksack.
[Next page...]
Fast friends at nine thousand feet. It seemed right.
At five the next morning, Abdul and I set out in the gray light, carrying water and rain gear. I’d wanted to avoid the messy scrawl of the legion of French tourists who’d arrived in the late evening, most with gear that leaned more to Prada than Patagonia. “In high season,” Abdul said, “the trail is like the Champs-Élysées.” As we climbed the enormous rock scree that led to the tippy-top of Toubkal, I consulted my hiking watch, which had an altimeter. By 5:56 we’d reached 11,010 feet. Rock stars!At 6:23, 11,770 feet. Doing nicely. Abdul had a lead on me, though.
At 7:09, 12,830 feet. Abdul far ahead. Toubkal was like the Empire State Building. The closer you got, the less of it you saw.
Trudge. Breathe. Trudge. Climbing Everest has gotta suck. Then, Toubkal’s last thousand, brutish feet-a steep spire. Abdul went straight up. I followed. Slowly.
Abdul: “All okay?”
Me: “Good, good.”
Me, thinking: Not so good.
At seven-something (forget the watch)-the summit, 13,664 feet. Breathing cleared. Energy returned. We congratulated each other. North Africa spread before us, clothed in a mist, with Marrakech to the north and Jbel Siroua to the south. We had the vista to ourselves. On this particular day, we were the first to ascend. This was the fastest he’d ever made it, Abdul said.
The sharp wind soon coaxed us back down. Abdul led me along a ridge at the mountain’s edge, and we saw other hikers climbing up. They were using a much easier, circuitous route-a far cry from our goat-up-the-mountain approach. “Hey!” I cried out to Abdul.
He turned and smiled impishly. “Well, you kept asking me to make things harder. So I did.”
Grabbing a fistful of black mane and throwing a sore leg over the English saddle, I mounted up as the stable hands watched. It was the litmus test for whether or not the client had a clue. The enormous stallion, Kerout, settled under my weight, and I walked him in a tight ring. The boys wandered away. Satisfied, I hoped. It was 9:30 a.m., and despite a body that complained of Toubkal, I was on to my next adventure. I was at the stables of La Roseraie, a property in the hamlet of Ouirgane, along the road to Taroudant. The stables are famous, and judging from the shape of the purebreds, I could see why.
There’s an inevitable element of fear when riding in foreign locales. I’ve had a few near misses with lousy tack and less-than-broke horses in South America and Central Asia. Yet they’ve left me only more enamored of riding. I’ll admit to having Hidalgo fantasies of racing across a vast plain with perfect form, the vision of cowboy cool. There’s a confidence about a truly good rider that I’d dearly love to emulate. I’ve never had lessons. I believe in simply putting in saddle time-and occasionally falling off.
