The Mountain Plateau Cedar Forest

The Mountain Plateau Cedar Forest: 1 Day

Trek Grade: Easy to Moderate

Your trek starts outside of Azrou with a gentle climb to your picnic spot on the summit of Ras Kharzouza, then down through cedar forests to plateaus with an abundance of wildflowers and extensive birdlife.

Fez (or Meknes) to Immouzèr Du Kandar and Ifrane

Departure from Fez (or Meknes) at around 8.30 in the morning for an exciting 2 hours’ drive towards the south across the breadbasket of Morocco to the foothills of the Middle Atlas Ranges and the small 1920s French-built hill station of Immouzèr Du Kandar (1,220m). Here we’ll pause for ten minutes by the kasbah for a look at the little medina and take in the pleasant Saiss Plateau and distant Fes, continuing on to the squeaky-clean Moroccan pseudo-Swiss town of Ifrane (1,650m), with its slanted,  russet-tiled roofs hidden amidst a forest of cedar, which cannot grow below 1,600m. Ifrane which is mainly a winter ski resort - and a summer hideaway for rich Moroccans wishing to escape the hustle and heat of the large cities.

Ifrane to Azrou

We now drive through to the first real town in the central Atlas - Azrou which, in the local Tamazight means “rock,” for next to the mosque is the massive outcrop from which this town takes its name – and was for a long time a strategic settlement established to effect some form of control of the independent mountain Berber peoples. On Tuesdays there is a souq to where the Beni M’Guild tribes come to trade. This particular tribe of the Sanhaya Berber is renowned for its intricately-designed carpets of 80 knots to the square metre. The region is also renowned as being the first to carve figures from cedar and nut woods, the woods being stored for one year prior to carving.

Azrou to Summit of Ras Kharzouza

From here we continue up along a winding road to a small holiday camp from whence we set out on our moderately-easy 45 minute climb straight up through stands of evergreen holm oak, cork and juniper, passing over limestone boulders and shale until we reach some 1,600m where we shall find the stands of young cedar trees alongside coves and little gorges, to the summit cliffs of Ras Kharzouza (1,900m), where we shall stop on a ridge for our picnic, overlooking the verdant Tigrigra Valley, Azrou and the important Amazigh village of Aïn Leuh, with its ruined kasbah and flat-roofed houses in tiers overlooking the valley.

Ras Kharzouza to the Azrou Valley

Our trek descends through stands of age-old cedar along a plateau scattered with seasonal peonies, asphodels, poppies and daisies, and the green woodpeckers, wagtails, the red-billed blackbird and the caw of the yellow-billed jackdaw breaking the silence. The cool shade of these species of Cedrus Atlantica Manetti intermingled with its cousin the juniper; holly and bracken ferns, fir trees, thyme and wheatgrass, the forest floor springy and soft to our feet, all contribute to a wonderful walk through a jealously protected ecosystem. We may pass by the tents of the semi-nomadic Berber Essehb tribe of shepherds set amidst stands of hawthorn, holly, Montpellier maple and giant conifer as we cross the Valley of the Apes, where we’ll expect to see ,and possibly feed, the Barbary Apes (which is, in fact a macaque, or monkey, rather than an ape) – macaca sylvanus -which patrol this area. These troops of multimale, multifemale primates feed on more than 2,000 different plants and gorge themselves on the budding cones during spring. We continue on through the cedar forest until we reach reputedly the oldest tree in Morocco’s Middle Atlas - Gouraud’s Cedar - and quite dead! Surrounded by other trees of almost the same calibre, this cedar is said to be some 800 years old, though some say the original tree of, some 980 years of age, was felled in the 1900s, yet still stands 40 metres high and has a girth of some 8 metres, though it is now almost dead. After some 14kms of splendid walking and remarkable photo-ops, we rejoin our awaiting minibus, at around 4.30 in the evening, to take us back to Fez (or Meknes).

* PICNIC LUNCH: consists normally of fresh Moroccan salad, cheese, tuna fish *, fruit, bread, mint tea. * If vegetarian or vegan please pre-advise.