Toubkal Climb

This was on the way up when the snow started. We should have known better.

On the way down after spending the night at the refuge. We couldn't turn around to face the camera because the 30mph wind was blowing ice chunks at us. It hurt.

1 week before this picture he was in the desert riding camels. Now he's in the middle of a blizzard. Who woulda thunk it?

Wow. Remember how I said that I didn't think the climb was going to be very difficult because it wasn't a very technical climb? Yeah, scratch that. About 1/3 of the way up it started to hail and as our altitude increased so did the intensity of the storm. By the time we reached the refuge to spend the night it was a blizzard with intermittent white-outs from the wind gusts. The refuge itself was an amazing place, reminiscent of an old ski lodge/dorm room. There were climbers from around the world, but most notably 2 large groups of Spaniards and Germans whom we talked to about the conditions. They were clearly more experienced than us-- and better outfitted. Two of my companions only brought tennis shoes for the climb and I only brought 1 pair of pants and a fleece jacket. By the time we woke up in the morning the summit climb was out of the question as it snowed all night. At that point we didn't even know if we were going to climb down or not! After talking with some of the guides and other climbers we decided we better leave before conditions worsened so we got into our wet clothes again and took off. Thank God the wind was coming from behind us. There were wind gusts up to 30mph and snow drifts covering the trail that were up to my stomach in places. We had to crawl through the snow in other places because we kept sinking in and it was too difficult to traverse. It was insane! I'm not even mad that we didn't make it to the summit because of the shear hilarity of our circumstances. I kept laughing like a mad man whenever the wind gusts made it impossible to see or whenever I would sink down into the snow up to my chest. That's all we could do in that situation, just laugh at our naivete and the ridiculous situation we were in. At one point our guide Alex, PCV who lives in the national park, started laughing because a week before he had been riding camels in the desert and now here he was in a blizzard on the face of a mountain. Morocco is a crazy place like that. After about 6 hours we made it down okay and after the past 5 days of resting my muscles have finally stopped aching. My camera has been on the fritz so I didn't take any pictures but my companions have slowly been sending me some of theirs so more pictures on the way as I receive them!