Taghia: Hi-Jinks in the High Atlas (2)

(continued from here)

In the second of this 2-part series, Dave Pickford recounts his ascent of some of the impeccable routes to be found at Taghia, Morocco...

PART 2

There was a tangible excitement in the air around Said’s courtyard that evening, as pot after pot of mint tea was drunk and replenished, and the five of us discussed plans for the next ‘big hit’. Twid and Steve’s next calling card was the route that had been a hot topic of conversation for serious sport climbers in France since its first ascent and its captivating reportage in the magazine Grimpeur.

The statuesque and serpentine creation of Les Rivieres Pourpres (500m, 6b+, 6c, 6c+, 7b, 7a+, 7a+, 6c, 7a, 7b, 7a+, 7b, 7b+), perhaps the most precociously brilliant brainchild of the Petit/Piola partnership, soars up the massive north wall of Ta Oujidad, and is a climb that elegantly prefigures its growing reputation as simply one of the very best long sport routes in the world.

Our first attempt at the route was foiled on the third belay by worsening weather, followed by an exciting retreat from the canyon with the normally dry river suddenly gaining spate at a rate which has to be seen to be believed. After a day sheltering from the unreliable conditions on some overhanging single pitch routes, which make up for in quality and lactic acid accumulation what they lack in quantity, the weather cleared up giving us the opportunity for a second chance.

Climbing in a team of three gave us plenty of time to rest between leads, and certainly made our onsight flashed ascent a more reasonable proposition, and the fact that the previous day’s rain had washed off all Twid and Steve’s chalk made it all the more rewarding.

Getting past our previous high point at the end of pitch three before 8am, there was a lighthearted sense of confidence - probably due to the absence of even a whisker of cirrus in the sky - as we swung leads on the next 6 pitches that take the route bang into the middle of the headwall, one of the most perfect sheets of vertical limestone I’ve ever seen. By 3 o’clock we’d reached the terrace with just one pitch to go before we’d cracked it.

Somehow, I found myself on the sharp end, and although the predictable katabatic evening wind had started to really take the edge off the temperature, I felt warm enough to get into a decent flow on the gently overhanging groove in the very last steep section of the face. The uncompromising angle of this pitch is compensated for by the reassuringly positive quartzitic pockets, which lead eventually to an impasse after about 25 metres. Shaking out on a jug below this section, the prospect of falling off here was evidently ludicrous in the face of all the consummate onsight climbing by Jack and Juha on the lower pitches.

"my fingers sank into a perfect
second-joint edge"

I double-checked the exact whereabouts of what appeared to be a good pocket high to the right, launched up from the jug and after a quick foot-shuffle and cross through into a crimp, threw my right foot out to a high edge and eyeballed the hold. There are times in onsight climbing when you are sure you have blown it, and times when you know you’ve got it… suddenly relaxed, I made the stretch up for the hold the right, my fingers sinking into a perfect second-joint edge. The final moves up the groove floated by in a haze of endorphin release to the comfort of the belay.

"we'd had an exceptional
day's climbing"

As Jack and Juha followed, I considered the enormous effort by Petit and Piola in creating this stupendous climb, and the achievement of its result. After a celebratory round of the seemingly unlimited supply of power-gel sachets Jack had been propitiously storing about his person, we threw the ropes out into the wind and began the long, long slide back down to the canyon floor. There was unanimous agreement between the three of us over the rounds of mint tea that evening that we’d had an exceptional day’s climbing.

The thing about Taghia is that routes like Les Rivieres Pourpres are not one-offs: this quality of rock climbing is characteristic of a substantial collection of routes here. The other big line we managed to make a complete, free ascent of was Fantasia, a major new route established over 3 weeks of effort in May 2005 by top Polish climbers David Kaszilkovski and Eliza Kubauska. It is one of Taghia’s longest modern routes, and the roll-call of pitches is enough to make most climbers’ fingers sweat a little: 700m, 6b, 6a+, 6c, 6c+, 6c+, 7c+, 7b+, 7a, 7a+, 7b, 7c, 7b, 6c+, 6c, 5+, 5+, 5, 5.

We spread our ascent over two days, which combined with the team-of-three approach seemed to work well, and meant we free climbed the entire route, onsighting every pitch except the crux 6th pitch, which I worked on at the end of the first day and redpointed the next morning, after jumaring up the lines we fixed up the first five pitches.

The big push to finish the route on the second day was largely down to Jack and Juha, who seemed to have treated the first day as a gentle warm-up for the challenge of the enormous headwall, swinging no-nonsense onsight leads with abandon, as if they were on a casual bolt-clipping jaunt somewhere on the Costa Blanca.

Leading the 9th pitch, a 50 metre 7a+, I just managed to get the better of a serious onset of elbow cramp (probably brought on by a lack of salt), and gladly handed the sharp end over to Jack for the last hard pitches. As we watched the shadows enveloping the village over a thousand metres below from the sanctuary of a cosy niche on the 10th belay, Juha and I shouted a few words of encouragement as Jack cranked out the last of the difficulties on pitch 11, smoothly onsighting the intricate 7c climbing and completing the successful ascent of what we unanimously agreed had been one of the most satisfying long routes we had ever done.

"The entire valley was swathed
in the ethereal light of
an autumnal moon"

On the long abseil back down to the gear on the ledge above the canyon, night swiftly replaced light and we were cocooned from the outrageous exposure by the limits of three headtorch beams. As we neared the top of the fixed lines, a huge full moon edged its way out from behind the shadowlit ridge of Jebel Timrazine to the south west. The entire Taghia valley was swathed in the ethereal light of that autumnal moon rising across one of the greatest ridge-lines in the high Atlas; a hunter’s moon, as our European ancestors called it. Staggering down the scree to the river late that evening, knackered but elated after the climb we’d just done, my thoughts were more concentrated by tagine and endless pots of mint tea than the prospects of nocturnal hunting.

Before we left Taghia that October we had to have a look at the immense west face of Ta’ Dararat, home to L’Axe du Mal, another Petit/Piola creation, and one of Taghia’s finest hard routes. At 500 metres it is of a similar stature to the other routes here, but the other thing about this wall is its utterly unforgiving verticality, which simply doesn’t let up from the end of the initial slabs to the very top of the wall, true El Capitan style. The pitch grades give some idea of how sustained the climbing is: 6c, 6b, 7a, 7a, 6c+, 7a+, 7a, 7b, 7b+, 7c+, 7a, 7a+, 6b+. This route is the epitome of that great French vision of ‘l’escalade libre’, an awesome and improbable line of weakness up a vast impending sheet of limestone.

Unfortunately, our attempt on L’Axe du Mal was foiled just below the crux pitches by the first big storm of the autumn blowing in off Jebel Lalaguen, forcing a swift abseil and even swifter retreat from the canyon, which would have become completely impassable in full spate. Thoughts of persevering were swiftly discounted as we considered the possibility of waiting out the first big winter storm in that tiny bivouac cave, waiting for the raging torrent to subside.

But it didn’t matter - we’d had an incredible trip, which included some of the best climbing any of the five of us had ever done, amid the sublime isolation of north Africa’s highest mountains. It is always a good sign when you begin planning your next visit before you leave a place, and in the case of Taghia, that second trip simply couldn’t come too soon.

<<< Go back to Part I