I'm doing some writing about Morocco at the moment and a few days earlier had written about how safe the country is.

In some 35-40 visits over the last 38 years I have never encountered anything so blatent as this. Re-reading my post I don't think I adequately expressed how exposed I was.

I checked all the barbed wire places (some six in total) and there was no sign of recent stringing across the trail. The cirque was something else with not much sign of recent traffic, and little sign of maintenance. I've done it seven times before, mostly going down into the cirque heading SW. I remember vividly the fun I had riding my XR400R up the cirque showing off to some Austrians on KTMs and I thought it would be interesting to take my fully loaded Tenere the same direction on the basis that stony slopes are often best tackled uphill rather than downhill.

This theory might hold normally but the cirque in places has a slope of maybe 20 degrees. And there's loads of places where debris comes over the track and increases the angle of slope to maybe 45-50 degrees. So it was 'challenging' in places. Then part of the track was washed out totally and whilst there was a clearly marked detour if coming down, the detour wasn't at all apparent going up and for a while I thought I would either have to face the bandits again or go the alternate route through the Gorge de Jaffar.

The two rocks partially blocking the trail are still there but the trail has been widened around them and I guess most 4WD traffic can get past.

After getting to Midelt the battery started acting up and I decided on a late night blast to Fez so I could get things checked out. Not realising of course that today is Sunday. And it's raining heavily, so I'm having a day off.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)