It was photos of climbing on the steep orange walls of the Todra Gorge that initially peaked my interest in Morocco. While Tafraout in the Anti-Atlas Mountains was more of a granite trad area, Todra is a grippy limestone sport multi-pitch area. I spent four non-travel days just outside the canyon with the hopes of doing some harder sport and some of the many multi-pitches. The rock was good and the climbing fun, but the guide book situation a bit lacking. Unfortunately a guide-issue kept me from getting in a lot of climbing, but I created an awesome side as a result from that!
Sport Multi-pitch and Guide Problems
Adventures Verticales Maroc is the guide service in Todra that claims it produced the local “guide book” and supports development. So I stayed in their guesthouse (A Secret Garden) and booked a guide with them since I was solo. The guesthouse was great and I became friends with Ismaél staffing it, but in Ramadan and low season there were no climbers to connect with there. Only 2-3 parties were seen a day.
I wanted a long route with a good view of the tall gorge, so I picked Qui L’eut cru? (5.9, 10p, 1,800 ft) as my first climb. In a recent Reno American Alpine Club discussion, a guide said one of his rules is that if three things go wrong, you should consider bailing. That resonated with me and kinda goes along with trusting your intuition if things feel weird with people or while traveling. This was the case with my guide. He repeatedly rigged his ATC backwards (even after I pointed it out and at multiple belays), dropped it once, started climbing before I told him on-belay from the top, would take down a sliding x and replace it a chain of quick draws, left a stuck gate open on one of these draws in the link, would break down the anchor that I was direct into and take me out without asking, etc.
This was “fine” because I was leading everything, it was easy enough to treat it as “no-fall” climbing and Morocco’s grading was quite soft. However, guide-complex (“I’ve been climbing for 45 years”) and poor skills are a dangerous over confidence combination. There were just too many weird things for me to trust him on a lead fall doing something hard. He was ambiguous about his lead ability by saying he was “old now” / I don’t know if I trusted him to make good decisions on lead either… So… I just “got through” the climb. It was “fine”… and I came back early even though it was mid day and he was encouraging to get more routes in. I then canceled my second day guiding since, if this was the quality of guides from the leading stewardship company… then I’d rather pick my own belay partners.
So, I was pretty disappointed not to climb here much. My other guides in Morocco had been great and I didn’t want to enforce a narrative that Moroccan guides were generally unknowledgeable to Westerners… I thought a lot about what to do about this though, since I need to look out for the climbing community if I don’t even trust the guides here as casual belay partners. Also, rigging the belay backwards could result in him dropping a heavier tourist climber with a smaller diameter rope, even on top rope. Eventually, I decided not to immediately blow up the rating / review of the guide company saying they were unsafe on Trip Advisor, which could be fatal to their business and emailed the company. I got an “acceptable” response acknowledging this didn’t meet expectations and they would look into it formally, which I guess was enough since I don’t want to destroy local supporters of climbing here either.
As for the Todra Gorge, I’d come back with partners since the rock seemed fun. It kinda seemed like most climbing was outside the steep walls of the inner gorge, but there seemed a lot here in a variety of grades. It was weird that some of the routes in the book were unaccessible since people were selling their wares over them, but everyone has to make money from the tourists I guess… This place could be really great with a proper guide book.
Taraksha Gorge: An Unexpected Side Trip
The canyons / mountains around Todra were pretty fun with great views. I went on another “Google maps has this random point of interest with an interesting picture” adventure to the Taraksha Gorge on what I let turn into a multi-canyon, mega, 19 mile, 5,800 ft exploration run exploring. The Taraksha Gorge was super cool with steep, impressive walls (if shorter than Todra). I probably also completed a first documented Western descent of a non-technical canyon while running down the watercourse of for several miles.
I also got one some good hikes / scrambles around town.
