Briefing / before you fly
Toubkal,
practically speaking.
The twelve things that decide whether the weekend goes smoothly, answered properly rather than in a line each. If something here is still unclear, message me — the number on this site is mine and I would rather answer it twice than have you find out on the Friday.
01
Getting here
Fly to Marrakech (RAK). Ryanair, Transavia, easyJet and Air Arabia serve most of Europe, and booked a few weeks out you can usually be under €120 return. Land any time before about 15:00 on the Friday and you are comfortable — we meet in the afternoon and drive up the valley together, and the transfer is two hours. If your only option lands late, tell me before you book the flight rather than after: sometimes we can move the meet, and sometimes the honest answer is to take the next weekend instead. Going home, you are back in Marrakech around 17:30 on Sunday, so an evening flight is fine and a Monday morning flight is better.
02
Visas and passports
EU, UK, US, Canadian, Australian and most Latin American passports need no visa for stays under 90 days. Bring a passport valid at least six months beyond your arrival date — that is the rule that catches people, not the visa. Nothing about the trek itself needs a permit in your name; park fees and permits are ours to arrange and they are inside the price. If you hold a passport not listed here, check with your nearest Moroccan consulate early, because that is the one thing on this page I cannot fix for you at short notice.
03
Insurance
Required, and we do check it — this is the one condition we will not bend on. Your policy has to cover trekking to at least 4,200 m and it has to cover helicopter evacuation, because the descent from the upper mountain is a long walk and a bad day up there is not a taxi ride. World Nomads, the Alpine Club policies and most European travel insurance with a mountain or trekking add-on qualify. Standard travel insurance usually does not: read the altitude limit in the wording, not the marketing page. Send me the policy summary and I will tell you whether it holds.
04
Altitude
Toubkal is 4,167 m, which is high enough that your body notices and not so high that the mountain is only for specialists. The itinerary is the plan for it: a night at 1,900 m in Aremd on Friday and a night at 3,207 m at the refuge on Saturday, before the push. We keep the pace slower than you will want to walk, your guide carries oxygen, and the group runs an oxygen check at the refuge on the Saturday evening. Headache, poor sleep and no appetite are ordinary at that height. Anything worse than ordinary and we go down, which is the treatment and not a punishment.
05
How hard it is
Three days, 29 km on foot and 2,427 m of ascent, with no climbing and nothing that needs your hands. Saturday is the long one: about six hours and 1,307 m up to the refuge. Sunday is the early one: moving at 04:30, on the summit around 08:10, and back down to the valley by mid-afternoon — about nine hours in total, most of it on rough ground. We rate it 3 out of 5, and what that means in practice is that you should be comfortable walking six to eight hours on rough ground on consecutive days. If you are the slowest in the group, the group walks at your pace or splits with a second guide.
06
Kit, and what we lend you
The things that have to be yours and worn in are boots with ankle support, a waterproof shell top and bottom, an insulated jacket for the summit, base layers, a hat and gloves, a headtorch with fresh batteries, sunglasses, high-factor sun cream and a 30-litre daypack. Crampons and an ice axe in season, trekking poles and a refuge sleeping bag come from us and are inside the price. Boot and jacket rental is €35 if you would rather not buy for one weekend. Two weeks before you come, send photographs of what you plan to bring and I will tell you what is missing or wrong — that costs nothing and it saves the trip more often than any other thing on this list.
07
Money
The dirham is a closed currency, so you draw cash on arrival rather than beforehand. Budget €10–15 a day for drinks, snacks and tips. Cards work in Marrakech and Essaouira and do not work in the mountains — there is no machine above Imlil, and the small places on the trail are cash only. All your meals on the trek are already paid for, so what you are carrying cash for is mint tea, a chocolate bar at the refuge and tips. On tipping: it is normal and it is not expected of you at a fixed rate. If you want a number, most groups put together something in the region of €10–15 a person for the guide and the same again for the cook and driver between them.
08
Food and dietary needs
All breakfasts and dinners plus two trail lunches are included. Dinner in Aremd is a tagine cooked in the house you are sleeping in, and it is usually the meal people remember. The refuge feeds forty people from one kitchen, so dinner there is soup, a main and fruit rather than a menu. Vegetarian is easy and standard. Vegan, gluten-free, allergies and anything else are all workable if you tell me when you enquire rather than on the Friday — the shopping happens in Marrakech before we drive up, and the refuge needs a day's notice.
09
Signal, and telling people you are alive
There is patchy mobile signal in Imlil and Aremd and effectively none between the refuge and the summit. Assume you are offline from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon and tell whoever worries about you before you leave the valley. Buy a local SIM at the airport if you want data in Marrakech; you do not need one for the trek. The WhatsApp group opens a week before departure with names, arrival times and the forecast, and it stays open afterwards, which is where most of the group photographs end up.
10
Amazigh valleys
The trail passes through working villages, walnut terraces and a live shrine at Sidi Chamharouch. Ask before photographing people and accept no as an answer. Cover shoulders and knees in the villages — nobody will confront you about it, and doing it anyway is the difference between a visitor and a tourist. Buy your tea from the small places rather than carrying every dirham past them. Our guides, cooks and drivers are from this valley, which is the point: the money for your weekend stays in the place your weekend happened in.
11
When to come
Late September and October are the best weekends of the year: the heat has broken, the snow has not arrived, and the light in the afternoon is long and gold. May to August is dry and reliable, hot in the valley and pleasant at the top. December to March is a snow climb above the refuge — crampons and an axe, taught at the refuge the evening before — and it is genuinely excellent if you come to learn something rather than to tick a summit. April is the month I am most careful about, because the upper mountain is unpredictable while the snow lets go.
12
If the weather takes your summit
Your guide has the final word on summit morning and there is a fixed 09:00 turnaround. If he turns the group around, the attempt is on us: a free date change, and you pay only the refuge night. That is written down here because it is the promise that matters most and the one most easily quietly dropped. It has happened, I have written about it, and nobody asked for their money back.
Still deciding
The longer answers live in the journal
The questions that take more than a paragraph have their own pages: whether you need a guide, how hard it actually is, what 4,167 m does to you, what the whole weekend costs and what booking on your own looks like. The trip itself, day by day, is on the Toubkal page.