We recommend arriving in Marrakech a day or two early to allow your body to adjust to local time and to make sure any flight or luggage delays don’t spoil your trip.
Your guides will meet you at your hotel on the morning of day 1.
Your guide will meet you all at your riad in Marrakech in the morning, then over some mint tea will go through the all-important pre-trip briefing. He will set the tone of the week ahead, explain the trails to come and answer any questions that you may have.
After your briefing you’ll meet your city guide and hit the town for a tour around the world famous Jemaa El-Fnaa square, craft markets, into the souks, and enjoy your welcome dinner in one of your guides’ favourite places hidden in the alleyways of Marrakech.
We have an early start this morning in order to drive one hour from Marrakech, into the countryside to a very special spot. This is the lift-off site for our hot air balloon ride!
The flight will lift us over the beautiful landscapes and villages surrounding Marrakech, and you’ll watch the mist lift as the sun rises over the High Atlas Mountains. After an hour or so enjoying the tranquillity of being in the air, we’ll enjoy breakfast together at the balloon basecamp before heading back to our riad.
Once packed up, we’ll leave Marrakech and drive into the foothills of the Atlas, to the village of Imlil. We’ll shuttle you up to a high mountain pass where we’ll build our bikes and ride a mixture of technical singletrack and gravel roads as we descend back down to the village.
This is a great introduction to the type of riding you’ll experience this week, with a mixture of ‘off-road’ (dirt road) and singletrack trails, a little bit of pushing the bike at times, and narrow trail with a bit of exposure.
Along the way we’ll stop at your guide’s home village to share mint tea with his family.
We’ll arrive back at your small hotel in Imlil, get washed up and then enjoy dinner over-looking the mountains.
You will be presented with the typical breakfast of breads, pancakes, fruit, eggs, plenty of mint tea and spreads. With appetites satisfied we’ll be ready for today’s challenge: tackling the pass of Tizi Mezzik (2280m).
We’ll leave our accommodation behind and warm up our legs up with a road climb to the start of the singletrack. The start of the trail is steep, loose and rocky, and with altitude in the mix, it’s more efficient to load our bikes onto the backs of mules and climb this part on foot.
We have approximately two hours of hiking up the steep incline to the top of the pass.
Top tip : If you’re riding SPDs it would be worth carrying a light pair of walking shoes, it’ll make the hike more comfortable.
On top of the pass we’ll stop to soak up the immense views surrounding us, before we put on knee pads and straddle our bikes for the descent. There is only a pencil-thin line of singletrack that slices its way across the hillside, before peeling down the valley through villages that appear to be stuck to the side of the mountains whilst we weave from one side of the river to the other.
We’ll stop for lunch in a small village, where your chef will have prepared a fantastic spread of salad, bread, pasta, tagine and fruit, to re-fuel for the rest of your ride.
We’ll climb on road for a while, then pick up a piece of singletrack that drops us into jungle-type trail along a river, then red rolling trails to our little bit of heaven for the night in the High Atlas.
This is a challenging day, riding loose, narrow trails, with exposure on the right-hand-side, and some sections that you need to walk and push. However, the rewards are immense, with lots of diverse singletrack, spectacular landscapes and village riding.
Today we’ll ride from the lush green valley of Ouirgane, to the narrow gorge at Oshefilen and onto the plains around Amizmiz, we ride a relatively easy climbing day, skirting the shoulder of this corner of the High Atlas mountains.
After a short warm up trail that has you riding through a Mars-like landscape, with natural pumptrack and endless trail options, we cross the largest dam in Morocco to access yet another incredible ribbon of singletrack above the spectacular gorge of Oued Nfis.
The trail gets steep and rocky in places and you will have to push your bike at certain points, but there’s a great descent taking you to your beautiful riverside lunch spot.
The scenery throughout this ride will take your breath away, with the ever-changing colours of the earth a constant as you ride some of the finest singletrack imaginable.
The last 10km of trail is flanked by dry stone walls and small, subsistence farms en-route to your comfortable hotel in Amizmiz (1,005m).
Breakfast at our hotel will set you up for this circular journey that climbs up to the high plateau that hangs above the foothills surrounding Amizmiz, before finishing with a long descent back to our hotel.
This is a day of less technical riding, lots of time for photo opportunities and plenty of rolling dirt roads combined with singletrack trails as we journey through the landscape.
We’ll warm our legs up as we traverse and weave between villages, farmers fields and impressive mud structures sculpted by years of rain and wind. To help us gain elevation, we’ll shuttle up the first part of our climb, before stepping things up a bit with a 45-minute road climb to our lunch stop on a high plateau. We’ll take time to relax and enjoy yet another tasty feast, with goats ambling and munching shrubs in the background.
From the high plateau we’ll ride a mixture of shepherd trails with rocks, singletrack descents and roads as we descend our way back to Amizmiz. Once back at our hotel you’ll have time before dinner to relax, take a swim in the pool, or simply enjoy a drink with views over the town.
This day will start with a longer vehicle transfer to shuttle us up into the towering arid peaks of the High Atlas.
After a couple of hours in the van, we’ll begin our pedal through the landscape, passing farmers and locals working in the morning light, all the way to our highest point of today at 1,873m above the village of Imi-N-Ourmer. We will need to shoulder our bikes for the last 15 minutes of this technical climb, but this adds a certain amount of adventure to this big day in the High Atlas of Morocco.
We’ll have some food and take in the breathtaking views on both sides of the pass, admiring the singletrack that stretches out and descends before us.
The first section of trail is very narrow and eroded, so there will be mandatory walking sections at times. Even though it looks flowing and rideable, the consequences of making a mistake or misjudging a corner are just too high here.
After that the trail becomes less exposed and we’ll be descending for the next couple of hours, blowing dust clouds up behind us as we go. But save some energy, as this trail has a few ups along the way to empty the legs of the most enthusiastic mountain biker!
As we arrive back at the support van, we load up and head along the valley to our accommodation for the next two nights. Settle in and enjoy the pool, recharging your batteries for tomorrow’s grand finale of mountain biking in Morocco.
From your little piece of paradise in the mountains, we’ll be shuttled 20km along the valley by our support crew.
As they leave us and head back to meet us at our lunch spot, we set off on the last throw of the dice for this adventure in Morocco, which involves 10km of the most sensational descending imaginable!
After this amazing one-hour descent of singletrack and sweeping corners, we’ll have lunch then head to our hotel, where we’ll have time to relax by the pool before our last celebratory dinner! A truly memorable last day on this magical traverse through Morocco that is a feast for the senses at each and every turn.
Sadly today we leave Morocco behind, say our farewells and transfer to Marrakech airport. You will depart for the airport early morning from your mountain paradise, to arrive around 11am.