The Kasbah Tizourgane, our base for the remaining 4 nights of our trip, is about an hour’s drive north of Tafraout and gives access to a lifetime’s worth of climbing on the north side of the Jebel Kest.

Bypassing the Kasbah, we made the short detour to Taskra East Pillars, in the Tizi North area, to climb Keep Taking the Pillars E1, 255m and 7 pitches, each one of which is given 5a in the guide.

It climbs the huge semi-detached pillar, taking in some really impressive terrain at a pretty amenable grade. Really only the first pitch warrants 5a, and there’s good gear where you need it (notably when pulling through the roof) so an overall grade of HVS would be pretty fair, but there’s no doubt it fully merits its 3*s (if not 4!)

Top tip is that you can traverse into the descent gully early via a terrace (without yomping over the upper dome) which gets you to an Ab point (if you are lucky) and a shortcut back to the normal descent. We also found it was easier to follow the gully line all the way down to the track rather than bushwacking.

Gorgeous flowers on the descent

We were met on the descent by Ismail, the owner of the splendid house at the foot of the crag, and he insisted on welcoming us into his home for tea.

We were royally entertained, and introduced to his family, and he explained his ambitions to develop his home into a gite / guesthouse for visiting climbers. We were more than happy to pose for “publicity photos” and when hopefully it opens next year (Inshalla!) I can vouch for the outstanding hospitality and stupendous setting – It would make a great base for the climbing in the Tizi area.

This unexpected and magical end to a great day’s climbing was somewhat tarnished by arriving back to the car to find a flat tyre. Worse still, there was no spare, just a pump and one of those bottles of white repair gloop (the worst invention of the 21st Century?) Even worse, the bottle was empty and from the telltale leak of gloop from the puncture it was clear that a previous punter had used the kit on a puncture and not confessed to the rental company. Luckily, the tyre held enough air for us to trundle very slowly to the Kasbah and our bed for the night. I won’t bore you with the dozen phone calls, endless wait music and much stretching of my french, but the end result was a two-hour round trip back to Tafraout to find the tyre beyond repair, but a part-worn replacement was secured. We’re back in business!

By now it was 1pm, but we were determined to stick to our itinerary and the next item on the sports plan was a visit to Icebox Canyon. Jake and I had climbed here on our previous trip and done a pair of stellar E3s: Ice Breaker and Arctic Monkeys. There’s a blog post here which also incudes some approach beta:

Ice Box Canyon

Andy and Paul racked up for the former, while Graham and I teamed up for Polar Bear, E1 5b. This takes a soaring line up the left of a huge cave / recess, with a fairly spicy first 10m then steady jug hauling on huge spikes. Here’s Graham on the first stance with Paul and Andy just about visible on Icebreaker beyond.

Pitch 2 only gets 5a but is just as tricky and really spectacular, with quite intricate climbing.

We set up an “express elevator” rap and sped down for a second route.

After spending quite a while head-scratching, we couldn’t really convince ourselves of the line of the two E2s we’d been looking for, so settled for And Then Nectar, E1 5b. You traverse a long way from the left to reach the base of a crack, which turns out not to have much in the way of holds, so you keep traversing to climb a steep wall up and back left to regain the crack higher up. This manoeuvre was really quite harrowing, with hard moves on flat, mossy holds, a long way from gear. I found it significantly more taxing than any of the E2s I did during the week – might just have been me, but probably worth an extra E point. Graham’s pitch was also pretty demanding with a runout sting-in-the-tail up a steep and poorly protected headwall.

Great views up the canyon as the sun came round to light up the show, and a few pics of Paul and Andy on Polar Bear

We topped out in the gloaming and made the thankfully short walk back to the car trying not to think about the nocturnal habits of the local snake population. Back to the Kasbah in time for another excellent dinner of chicken tagine, which we felt we’d earned after a busy day!