This guide, an essential complement to Volume 1 of Pistes du Maroc, allows a rediscovery of the central High Atlas by exploring, in addition to the great classic routes revisited, fantastic new high-altitude trails, opened recently and to look closely at the immense heritage riches of this region: dinosaur track sites discovered by Hassan Yamani, mining sites and fossil quarries, vestiges of a thousand-year-old human occupation...
70 4x4 routes totaling more than 4,100 km and around thirty easy hikes totaling 236 km, more than 2,000 waypoints identified.
The central High Atlas is formed by two parallel chains where important rivers (assifs) are born. While the Mgoun chain is bordered to the north by the Tessaout, the chain formed by the Ouaougoulzat and Ghat-Tarkedit is bordered in its northern part by the Bougmez assif. Less rich than those of the Toubkal, the slopes of the valleys are often wooded. The architecture is remarkable with its stone or rammed earth fortress houses.
Despite the Moroccan government's policy of opening up, some of these high valleys still remain in the state where the old pastoral civilization that developed there since the dawn of time has gradually, with the climate, shaped the rural landscape. But the modern world is now moving forward very quickly, particularly with the arrival of electricity, which has allowed satellite dishes to appear on the tents of transhumants. The Atlas is a special region of modern Morocco, because until recently it remained isolated from the major human, economic and tourist flows. This mountain range has been able to preserve its original identity and conserve its natural state and its ancestral pastoral civilization with exceptional brilliance. This is why, at a time when modern society is discovering itself lacking in ecology and the environment, and is concerned with returning to its roots, the Moroccan Atlas is able to offer the unsuspected resources it contains, the most obvious of which are nothing less than grandiose landscapes, with monumental architecture and rich colors; high peaks, reaching 4,000 meters, and immense massifs; valleys with impressive gorges, where the most beautiful, and by far, rivers in Morocco flow; unexpected forests at this altitude, still populated by game that has disappeared or is disappearing elsewhere in the country; high valleys where an active, friendly, proud pastoral world remains, rich in beautiful traditions.
