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How Long Does It Take To Climb Mount Toubkal?
We get asked a lot – How long does it take to Climb Mount Toubkal?
There are two answers to this questions and the first one is –Â
It takes two days to climb Mount Toubkal.
If you want to climb Toubkal in 2-days you will generally start your journey in Marrakech. It is a 1½ hour drive from Marrakech to the start of the trek in Imlil (1740m). The first day of trekking from Imlil will take you up to the Refuge (Base Camp of Toubkal) at 3207m.
The trek to Imlil will take around 6 hours and with nearly 1500m altitude gain on the day, you’ll be walking uphill for the majority of it!Â
Once you get to the Base Camp you will generally spend the night in one of the two refuges that are there. Early the following morning you will wake up and start the 3-4 hour walk to the summit of Mount Toubkal at 4167m. The views from the top are really spectacular, and you can spend some time there taking your photos and admiring the view.
It will take you around 2-3 hours to walk back down to the refuge again. Once you have had some lunch, it will be time to retrace your steps and head back to Imlil again which will take around 4 hours of walking back down. Many people will then have their transport waiting to whisk them back again to Marrakech for a shower and a beer!
At the Bucket List Company we don’t offer the 2-day trek for Mount Toubkal; we do this in 4 days.
The main reason for this is because of the altitude gain. In less than 24 hours on the 2-day trek you will gain 3701m in altitude.Â
Experience tells us that this is just too much, and we see so many people struggle on the summit with the effects of altitude.
Instead, we spend the first 2 days of our trek, trekking through local villages and walking over passes that see you reach altitudes of 2600m. During these two days we very rarely see other trekkers and you can enjoy your time trekking through the stunning High Atlas Mountains.
At the end of Day 2 we drop in Imlil and back down to 1740m to assist with the acclimitisation process. Our final 2 days are then the more typical 2 day Mount Toubkal Ascent as mentioned above.
The only other difference with our trek is that we spend our final night in Imlil as well. When we started our Toubkal treks we always headed back to Marrakech for the 4th night. Quite often though we would get back into Marrakech very late in the evening and some people who were tired had to rush the trek back to Imlil so they could get the transfer. Because of this we changed it so people could arrive in Imlil at their own pace and enjoy the trek back down.
So back to the original question, How long does it take to climb Mount Toubkal?
The easy answer is that it takes 2 days, but in our opinion you should take longer to make your journey a more enjoyable experience and give yourself more time to acclimatise.
If you are interested in our 8-Day Trip (4-Day Trek) to summit North Africa’s highest Mountain click the link below
