toubkal - three humans, four sheep

So. Toubkal ahead. We started when everyone was up already. Many do this trek and this mountain in two days only: 1. day to the refuge, 2. day up to Toubkal and all the way down to Imlil again. Sporty. Even more if you think about acute mountain sickness. That’s way not all of the trekkers get to the top. We are the lucky ones and started only at 8 o’clock. The ascent was very, very steep and icy, the view splendid. We took breaks in the sun and were enjoying dried dates and figues, sugar boosters! After some more very steep and slippery passages where we would meet a lot of people descending already (more or less equipped and more or less confident. I was really sorry for some because, as said, ice and steepness, no good) , we were at point to turn left and take the final meters. What a view! And we were all alone! Well, four sheep and a lamb were with us, hungry and eager to eat the rest of peanuts and dates we had. They belonged to a guy in one of the villages, he was looking for them for a long time. So Brahim called him and said he would try to chase them down (with us :-) ). We stayed approximately one hour up there, enjoying the calm, the warmth, the view, the air, eachother and of course that incredibly schnuslig lamb. Then it was time for the descent. That was quite difficult, not as slippery as I thought, but still, I would have rather made another 900m up then going down. We had some action because, sheep being sheep they firstly wemt up again so a second guide with the last group of the day chased them down where Brahim was, then those animals didn’t went down but straight, there were cliffs and oh dear, that little lamb. Anyway with Brahim shouting from down the cliff up to the other guide that somehow also went to the cliffs to get the sheep to turn around. As proven again, not the most clever animals but sweet ones. We all arrived down safely at around 2pm. Then we had the plan to take a shower. Shower is for free and with warm water. So far, so good. But there are two inconveniences: The dirt (so one of us had to play cloth rack while the other was showering) and the smell there. Oh dear. I am not picky but that was challenging. We had a lot of laughs and finally we were clean and warm. The next thing to do was filtering some more water. We had to either walk up the refuge to goto the river - or find the end of the ‘pipe’. We found it and after some pumping we had 4.5l of drinking water. Very cool. After all those things we had a snack with freshly made kind-of-pancakes, they were delicious. For diner we had fries, yummy. After diner we played dice with Brahim and he had a good hand, he won.Read more