Searching Old Dakar Routes
 

I've been to Morocco several times and thanks to the selfless support of the two well know gentleman Chris and Tim I learned to love Morocco! On order to tame my urge or actually fight my addiction I'm preparing for my next visit.
I've done the know tracks, so for this time I would like to add some more "special" routes.

How could I possibly get hold of a description or track along the old Paris-Dakar route?
I've asked on FB, I've searched the forum.
They all want me to book a guided tour but no one is able to share the actual routes from back then.

The only serious hint on the route I found was actually here:
https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hu...r-erfoud-86722

Can anyone help me to put together a track or gpx along the old Dakar route?

Greetings,
Wauschi

I'd be interested also, I'm surprised someone hasn't assembled a GPX showing various years' routes, and other (current) rallies.

Part of the problem may be that roadbook routes aren't made available as GPX files for obvious reasons, so I guess someone would need to have made them manually after the event.

And I have a feeling some of the more interesting sections may have been be further south, Mori etc?

Once you get to Erfoud heading west the old tracks are fairly easy to find, almost all are south of the N12 main road.

Erfoud all the way to Lac Iriki is pretty well documented. Problems with following the old Dakar route arise West of the Lac. Although the piste was signposted all the way through to Tata, last time I tried I got intercepted by the army and turned back, only 30km from Tata as well.

Heading west from Tata across to Assa the old route remains south of the main road, yet curiously its is unmapped on the latest OSM maps. Once you find it route finding is a question of following the mounds each side of the track. Again a number of military areas make it impossible to follow the route the whole way to Assa.

From Assa the dakar appears to have followed various options over the years SW toward Smara, if you follow Chris' route to Smara you won't go far wrong. South of Zag is off limits and despite a bit of exploring there last year I don't recall many of the old Dakar mounds.

Over the years the Dakar crossed into Mauritania at Smara or near Guelta Zemmour. I've followed 2 routes from Smara, one heading south out of town and then along the border and then the route Chris and I did last year which drops south from the Smara - Laayoune road further west, both have Dakar mounds marking the route.

Further south it gets a bit vague from my experience, last September we drove from Smara down to Dakhla, but after the road to Guelta Zemmour we got hit by a big sandstorm and seeing the end of the bonnet was difficult. As further north, there were dakar mounds marking the piste

Western Sahara
 

How bizarre Wauschi! I have just been contracted to do exactly that, next month, albeit it with specific archaeological objectives.
My clients are Swiss.

Barrie, interesting to hear!
We need to talk.

CU Wauschi

If I may be so bold as to say that you'll find that no one is actually WILLING to share-
This is often linked to potential liabilities on the part of the sharer in view of the possible risks involved by the end user and sadly our often too litigious society.doh

I have put many a track together from my very substantial library of data from which I can and have built gpx files but the hard nosed reality is that most people expect/want/ nay demand a 100% guarantee with a 100% precision and 100% totally risk-free (even if the data is given away for free!) and IMHO that's just not possible for obvious reasons.

Rekkam Plateau photos

I followed the Moroccan stretches of the Dakar for its last five or so years in Africa. The Rekkam Plateau was used many times and whilst I can't remember the routes per se, this is an example of what the plateau is like, the first Foreign legion fort is at N33° 42.150' W2° 07.650' and the video 'Rekkam Plateau Solitude' linked on the page above is shot a bit further south of that.

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2006 Dakar: https://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hu...on-dakar-18274

Further south, the bikes made their way to Merzouga area and the fifteenth photo on the link above shows me facing off against one of the Dakar trucks, this was a track that arrives at N32° 28.648' W3° 24.669' having run due west along the line of hills

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Petits Dunes route

And then further south again is one of the tracks that runs south from the N12. After visiting Gara Medour (The Mummy) I looped back on the road to leave it at N31° 16.201' W4° 21.951' on a track I had gone some way along nine years earlier watching the Dakar. You can see some of the videos from 2006 on the link above. As far as the route is concerned I knew I had to get through the 'foum' at Mharech at N30° 45.587' W4° 33.807', so had that as a waypoint to head for and otherwise just rode where I fancied, there are so many tracks in that area.

We're getting there!
Thanks for the contribution.
Hopefully I can post not just my findings along the route but also some nice images.

Cheers Wauschi

head SW if you want the more unused/unknown tracks. Merzouga to Zagora is well trodden. Tims route from Gara Medour down to Tafraoute Sidi Ali is a nice area but I prefer to head west further north rather than going through Mrech (not old Dakar routes though)

some of this
 

possibly may contain a few clues- maybe-no promises- dunno-

I don't know how much of Western Sahara was used as the interior was still heavily mined at the time. So several times at least the Dakar had special permission to cut through the berms and cross over into Mauritania along the northern border (where Ain Ben Tili is marked) and from there then dropped down into Mali.

On the final Dakar plans (the rally that was cancelled), Mali was deemed unsafe and all the stages that would have been held there were instead transferred to Mauritania. But then Mauri kicked off with four French guys killed and the rally was cancelled. Too late for me as my bike was in Southern Spain and my wife had an air ticket into Dakar, so I did it by myself. #ridelikethewind

Thanks for the link.
Knowing in which country and city the event took place is for sure something to start with.
However, I hoped to get more specific information.

Greetings, Wauschi

From my research, the Dakar first competed in Morocco in 1993, crossing into Algeria at Figuig. Then the 94 and 95 events included large sections in the WS.

The 94 rally headed down from Smara to Guergarat via Bir Anzarane and then came back north eventually closer to the coast. In 95 they came down the coast and then crossed into Mauritania near Assouerd.

Late 2018 I had a great evening at a friends place in Morocco with some competitors from the early days, lots of good wine and incredible stories from the racing bier

Great link, thanks.

26th Paris-Dakar Rally

Some of the better stage maps from the 2004 route. Not the best detail but if you zoom in and have some knowledge of the areas you can probably work out roughly where the Morocco stages went. Lots of the Morocco sections is liaison on road though

Stage 6 follows much of what I posted above, south of the N12 west of Foum Zguid. Unfortunately the military zones along this section make it impossible to follow the full stage without special permission from the local authorities.

When they cut across from Smara to Bir Moghrein did they have to cross SADR territory? Is there a point where you can cross (almost) straight from Morocco to Mauretania? What did the Polisario say about the rally?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...d_polisaro.gif

Majority of the crossings were due south of Smara, probably along what is now marked as the RN17b. Current maps show no or very little PFZ between Morocco and Mauritania here.

But as we know the extents of the Moroccan Sahara and PFZ have changed somewhat over the years. Polisario were never very keen on the rally, using it as an opportunity to raise the profile of their cause in the press.

(The RN17b is a miserable, heavily corrugated military piste, off limits to tourists. I certainly wouldnt recommend it, especially at 3am with an armed escort like when I was forced along it in 2017)

I downloaded this PDF years ago can't remember where I got it. No detail info on the routes but nevertheless lots of info. I tried to upload it here but it exceeds the size limit. I shared it on my google drive for now.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YAb...ew?usp=sharing

PDF limit doubled! So here it is.

Better results if you include "Paris" otherwise it throws up the modern rally.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pari...w=1536&bih=774

Mezo,

As I experimentaly found out a few years ago, there in fact is such a point. Berm at this point is in what officially is Mauritanian territory by good margin and is intentionally splitting the Polisario land to two parts. This is very obvious also from the Google Earth imagery.

Aha thank you Vrecha, very interesting. This means that Morocco and Mauretania could agree between themselves to open a road to Bir Moghrein and a border post.
Bir Moghrein is about 60 kms east of Guelta Zemmur and there is a road marked on some maps, sort of.
But the berm touches the corner at 26N and 12W. I cannot see on maps or satellite that it actually cuts into Mauretania.

Thank you for all the good feedback so far.
Although it seems no explizite GPX files are available, the file Patrik shared (THX Grant) is an outstanding basis to start local investigations.

Greetings,
Wauschi

It's worth looking also at the Gandini guidebooks, there's tons of interesting and useful information gathered. The book VI that describes the area of the occupied Western Sahara details also the routes that were used by the Paris-Dakar rally. You have descriptions, points of interests, together with gps coordinates. I can imagine that the volumes that deal with other parts of Morocco have also something to say about the pistes used by the rally.


Regarding the stages in WS, I have driven most of those many times (with the exception of some parts of RPD3) and can confirm what somebody already wrote on this forum, that those pistes are for the most part corrugated, quite stony except for some short sections far south and thus not very interesting for tourists. The locals use it because they offer the possibility of quick transport in the direction of N<->S. The army doesn't make much use of those pistes, their tracks run mainly in W<->E directions, but are marked in a same way, so some confusion on the crossroads can happen sometimes.


On a historical note, the rally camped at least one time in the early 2000s just outside the Ausard. Local friends have shown me photos of the camp.