After a week at Tefroute, we moved to the Kasbah, on the North Side. It is a delightful little hotel inside the fortified village and has been beautifully and simply restored – no en suite bathrooms but it is comfortable and our hosts Jamal and Malika, a young couple who have spent five years renovating their ancestral home, give a warm friendly welcome.

The car park is at the foot of a long flight of steps leading to the gateway to the village.

It really is a fortress – you have to wait to get in until they notice you from a remote video camera hidden in one of the loop holes, but you don't have to wait long and there is plenty to look at.

On arrival we were lucky to catch Paul Donnithorn and Pete Johnson who had spent the previous week doing new routes on the surrounding crags. They are pointing out potential new routes to us before driving over to Kasbah to do some new routing on the South Side.

The dining room on the roof top of the Kasbah. There is a big communal dining table and here we joined some French tourists and at the end on the right, sitting next to Graham, an ex Pat couple who lived near Toulouse in the summer, but had a second home in Tiznit on the coast where they spend the winters.

That afternoon we drove about 45 minutes up the back road towards Ait Baha and parked the car by the little hamlet of Imrir and had an hour's tough walk up to the foot of the climb.

Getting close. The route was on excellent rock, three pitches, and about hard severe 4a – we called it High Pillar. Jim Fotheringham and Mike Mortimer have done a route to the left and called the crag, Tea Pot Buttress.

Graham near the top

On the top of the Pillar. It was possible to scramble down to the right (facing in to the cliff) and along a series of gangways to the bottom.

At the foot we met this local who very kindly showed us a better way down.

The next day – our last - we chose this crag, just over the first pass, only half an hour from the Kasbah, on the same road by a little village called Taskra. The approach is short and easy taking about twenty minutes. The climb was magnificent, giving a thousand feet of climbing, most of which was around 4c, over a series of pillars. We called it Multiple Pillars of Pleasure. The way off is quite long – you go to the top and then swing left (south), over one rounded dome to to find a tenuous path that leads back down to the road.

Graham starting the first pitch

Graham on the Second Pillar.

I highly recommend the whole area. There is a guide published by Cicerone Press, Moroccan Anti Atlas by Claude Davies and there are several new routes books in the Hotel des Amandieres with hundreds of new routes and topos. They are very friendly and if you aren’t staying there just go in and ask to see the books and you can buy a beer!!!!

Ben Winteringham is working on a Web Guide that he should have up and running in the summer.