Do the Camel Dance!

Six weeks in Morocco was definitely interesting to say the least. I was in class about 95% of the time but we did manage to squeeze a little free time in and made a two day camel excursion into the Sahara to spend the night in a nomad tent.

We had one day off a week and every day off I would get out extra early to climb some of the tallest objectives around: 10+ pitches of mostly solid (sparsely) bolted limestone face climbing, crimping and high stepping all day long to reach the summit of the selected formation of that day.

I ended up getting sick on Thanksgiving which was quite the bummer as I missed out on a day of climbing but also because our host made an incredible dinner for us including roasting a whole lamb who was marched into camp the morning of and was food by the end of the night. Gives you a perspective of where your food comes from.


Mitch who is a friend of mine, an apple farmer in upstate NY, and a climber ended up organizing to come out to meet up for 2 weeks. Although I was quite busy with classwork, we still managed to get out and climb quite often and when I couldn't get out he was always able to find a partner with someone else in class or a local.. I always look forward to our random meet ups and wonder where we will cross paths next!

The course finished out with my successful completion of the Wilderness First Responder certification. We literally had no time to spare and were on our way out as soon as we finished. I flew back to Philadelphia where I would travel through three continents in three days and four continents within a week. As always, my stay at home was extremely brief and within days I was already on my way back down to South America.

I would return to Patagonia to complete my next rock climbing class (Rock 301). I was greatly looking forward to this class as we would be climbing at a place called Valle Cochamo which I have been dreaming of for over a year now. We would also be climbing at a place named Frey in Argentina. More on that in the next post...

Onto the pics!

The "Ferraris" of the Sahara

The "Camel Dance"

Playing on sand dunes at 6AM

Mitch peeking around the corner

Successful Summit shot!