100 km Trek Team
For what is now the sixth year running, STM Fidecs in Gibraltar entered a team for the Charity Challenge Event which saw them join a group of 40 who travelled deep into Morocco, hiked across 100km of Atlas Mountains and then ventured into the Sahara desert!STM’s Julian Camble has been one of the principal organisers of these charity challenge events out of Gibraltar since being approached by the charity Action Aid back in 2005. Having done three events for them, two of which were undertaken in Morocco’s Rif Mountains, and after he and many others were deeply moved by the poverty witnessed there, Julian co-founded the Gibraltar based charity RifCom (full name The Rif Community Foundation) in early 2009 to help those Rif communities who live so close to us in Gibraltar and yet who are so much less fortunate than we are. And he’s been running sponsored challenge and community events for them ever since.
“The 2011 November RifCom Charity Challenge was the toughest and longest event we’ve done so far” said Julian “but in many ways it has also been the most successful and popular yet, especially with the combination of a four-day sponsored trek and then a three-day optional extension.”
The four-day trek actually began on a Friday evening with a journey across the Straits to Tangier to catch “The Old Marrakech Express” sleeper train. Waking up in Marrakech, the 40-strong group then transferred by bus to a tiny village in the High Atlas Mountains where they joined their local support team of 23 men and 18 mules! Then they began to walk. Across a rope bridge and along rocky paths. Up and up and up they went, climbing a vertical kilometre to a mountain plateau some 2,000 metres high and near the snow-line, where they set up camp for the night. Hot mint tea and amazing food, which the cooking team seemed to magic out of nothing, replenished many exhausted bodies and everyone savoured their first evening and night in the middle of nowhere.
And so it went on the next day and the next. Walking one of the most famous trails of the High Atlas amidst staggeringly impressive scenery. Often setting up camp in the dark and leaving the next morning at first light. And finishing the third day’s walk at the world-renowned “Tichka Pass” trail that hangs on the edge of a cliff-face and which left everyone totally exhilarated by their achievement at reaching the top. The last day of the trek then gave everyone a complete change of scenery as they walked from mountain into desert, through deep, jagged valleys reminiscent of the Grand Canyon until eventually, some 100 kilometres after they began walking four days previously, they reached their destination of Ait BenHaddou (a world heritage site and scene of many a movie, including The Mummy and Gladiator!). The “optional extension”, which nearly everyone went on, then saw the group give their feet a rest and hop into mini-buses for an adventure that took them deeper into the Sahara. Travelling through the “Valley of Roses” and the “Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs”, across stone deserts and through oases, the group visited the staggering Todra Gorge before mounting camels that took them deep into the Merzouga Dunes. Returning to Marrakech for an afternoon’s shopping in its vast markets, everyone then hopped back onto the night-train once more and headed back to Tangier and the ferry home.
It was an extraordinary experience for everyone and also an incredible success for the charity, with the event raising in excess of an amazing £27,000 in sponsorships (net of all costs). In fact, the event was enjoyed so much that many are already signing up for next year’s Challenge, scheduled to take place from 19 to 28 October 2012. If you’d like to join the RifCom Charity Challenge experience, please email info@rifcom.org or click onto the charity’s website athttp://www.rifcom.org/
