Winter Mountaineering Course, Morocco

Olan recently led a Winter Mountaineering course in Morocco to Toubkal for us. He’s written a great report outlining the trip. “The trip ran smoothly with great weather and plenty of snow and we had a fairly intensive week covering all aspects of basic mountaineering…”

The trip ran smoothly with great weather and plenty of snow and we had a fairly intensive week covering all aspects of basic mountaineering.

On Day 1 we arrival at hut then climbed a section of a grade 1 gully and then roped up for the way down. All of the group had used crampons and axes before and were reasonable competent in their use.

The weather for Day 2 In the morning was quite overcast and windy with persistent snow showers so we covered some basic rope-work indoors inc. tying off a belay plate, prussiks, abseil set up, taking coils. In the afternoon we went looking for some ice and looked at ice screw placement and anchor set up as well as crampon technique on ice. The walking team arrived that evening.

Day 3 Toubkal. A relatively late start of 7am, leaving at 8.15 and we reached the summit by 11.30. One of the clients was going a little slow so I took the other clients with us. Another client climbed for about an hour and a half with his guide and then turned back. Day 4 was an Instructional day. We covered snow pits, ice axe arrest, Bucket seats and buried axe, snow bollards and deadman placement. Then for the last hour and a half we did 2 short pitches on mixed ground grade 1/2.

Day 5 We had decided to go back down to Arumd on Friday afternoon so for the morning we climbed a grade 1 gully which was deep with soft snow. We found some ice at the top (about grade 2) climbed that then skirted around the buttress and abseiled into another grade 1 gully which was quite loose. We then made our way back to the hut for 1pm and lunch. We left at 2pm for the 2.5 hour walk back to the lodge.

Olan Parkinson