A mountain that is 20kms away can look as smooth as a billiard table… So what looked like it should have been a short stroll up a reasonably steep golf course from our breakfast table on day 2 turned out to be an attempt at Jbel Erdouz a ‘proper’ 3600m mountain on day 3! The bit that looked like a Golf course turned out to be a 45-50° boulder field with no real path and brush and thorns tough enough to scratch paintwork!
It’s said that a camera can’t adequately convey the steepness of terrain or the depth of the experience, but when you have riders of the calibre of Mark Weir and Fabien Barel one-footing it down through the scree and the brush you know it’s steep! Look out also for the dirt and small stones being thrown up by the tyres and blown sideways! A proper mountain environment where the boys were glad to get down with the only casualty being a rear derailleur!