While scanning aerial mapping for new pistes in Morocco’s High Atlas I came across an intriguing possibility. A seemingly good track lead 25km off the N9 highway to the 2500-m Tizi Telouet pass on the High Atlas watershed (31.3372, -7.2663), a few miles east of the famous Tichka pass on the N9 trans Atlas. From that point southwards the way ahead became an obliterated mule path, but picked up rideable terrain in just two kilometres, with Telouet town visible nearby. Downhill on a light bike, walking where necessary, it might be doable, no? ‘Who wants to go first?’, I quipped on Twitter.

Like the grand old Duke of York and his 10,000 men, a column of pylons marches up and over the col, bound for the massive Nour solar plant, 50km away near Ouarzazate. You’d assume some sort of vehicle crawled over the slope to erect the pylons, but no service track is evident on the south side. Still, at the very least, riding the switchbacks up to the col for a quick look should be possible.

I mentioned this recce to a mate who’ll join me out there next week. He soon found some Spanish KTM-ers behind a YT channel called Enduro Aventura . They pulled off the Tizi Telouet descent (and a whole lot more) in 2002, filmed it all and capped it off with a tracklog on Wikiloc, classified as ‘Very Difficult’.
They call the Tizi Telouet ‘Collado Torretas’ or ‘tower/pylon col’? They confirm ‘the north face has been fixed with a track with a thousand curves and somewhat broken by the rain‘ but continue… ‘the south face on the way to Telouet is a narrow and broken trail with a lot of stones… This hill [trail] seems to be disappearing…‘. They speculate that truncated northside track suggests a new road might get put in, but I’ve found tracks or roads often come to a dead halt at provincial boundaries, which this watershed is. The col was just an efficient direct route for the power cables from Nour to Marrakech.

Their 80-minute vid below is timed to start at the Collado Torretas stage (just a few minutes). It’s soon turns gnarly af (stills above). But scan any other random minute in their vid and you’ll see just what light and lightly-loaded KTMs (including 2T) can achieve off-road in the hands of a fit and determined crew. You’ll be staggered to see what these guys blithely ride over. Chapeau to Enduro Aventura I say! The Men who Ride like Goats. Me, I think I’ll take the long way round.