Wednesday 20 July 2011

Morocco Day 4 - Imlil


Well today we had a pretty cruisy day. Our primary goal for today was to get the blog up to date and make sure we had our Toubkal plans for Thursday finalised. After this we would go back up the tarmac climb to the pass and run down the singletrack we saw there yesterday. We have since found out this path is an old silk route through the mountains.

We didn't finish updating day 1 and 2 blogs until nearly 2am so we had a wee lie in. After a nice brekky we had a quick look over the bikes to make sure nothing was shaken loose from Tuesday and loaded the day 3 blog to bring us bang up to date.

For lunch we headed down to the village centre and went to Hussein's offices where he runs his guiding company Mountain Travel Morocco (MTM travel agency) from. Hussein is organising our mules for tomorrow's ascent and has a lot of experience of the trails in this area - a good man to know. I've added his website link on the left. If you are coming to Imlil for trecking or mtbing, this guy will sort you out with accommodation, guides, mules etc etc without the hassle. It turns out that Abdul who is looking after us in the Dar is Hussein's brother (younger) and his elder brother Mohamed supports guided tours away from Imlil. All bases covered :-)


We found it was 4.30pm by the time we left so we didn't really have enough time to get back, repack our day packs and complete our ride before dinner, so enlisting Hussein's many contacts we caught a taxi (read clapped out old Merc) to the top of Tizi n'Tamater. Imlil uplift!

Brad, me and Rashid - heading for the pass.
 The descent was everything we hoped it would be. More lovely twisty singletrack with switchbacks inbetween. I really wish I could ride the switchbacks better, but I'm getting more confident each day. I'll have about 11km of them to practise on tomorrow!
Fantastic rocky loose singletrack descent


Spectator


Back at the Dar for 7pm, just in time for dinner - Soup, lamb tagine and fruit. And of course, mint tea.

Tonight we were joined for dinner by a couple from Belgium and Spain who will also be hiking up Toubkal and camping near the refuge at 3200m for up to 5 days!

So now the blog is updated, and Brad has checked over the bikes again, we will pack our bags for tomorrow's ascent and hopefully the next time we meet we will have achieved our goal, the ascent and descent of Jebel Toubkal on mtb in a single day. Wish us luck!

2 comments:

  1. Sounding like a ton of fun guys. We are all jealous in the shoppe.

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  2. Well done guys, looking forward to the final update of the big descent. I just feel I need to point out that Monopoly game was clearly going to be mine! Good to meet you both and hopefully see you on a trail back home some day. Geoff and Katie.

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