Disaster struck during the night, we were very lucky to escape unharmed, however some were not so lucky! During the night the cook needed to change the cooking gas canister, he does not have a torch and most lighting is through candles. As he changed the canister gas leaked through the valve, this in turn was ignited by the candle. We woke to a massive explosion and a fireball heading towards our tent. The fireball hit the front of the tent which in turn caught light. The above happened so quickly we had no time to react and were still zipped up in our sleeping bags. There were shouts of panic and exclamation all around including mine instructing someone to put the fire out. Lucky for us it only took a kick of the canister away from the tent to do this, thankfully the tent was made of fire retardant material!
The front of the tent contained our walking boots, cross trainers, walking poles, day sacks etc. Lucky for us none of these got damaged but we had to find our walking poles as they had been kicked away with the canister.
We got out of our tent to find that the cook and the cooks mate got burnt during the explosion, on their arms and legs. They were quite fortunate as the burns were not that bad and as we had a first aid kit we started to administer first aid to them both. Eventually we were in a position to return back to bed and try to get some much needed sleep before climbing the highest mountain in the High Atlas!
Despite last nights events we had a 3:45 am alarm call for breakfast and get ready to start walking at 4:45 (note the GPS time is BST which was 1 hour ahead of Moroccan time).
The front of the tent contained our walking boots, cross trainers, walking poles, day sacks etc. Lucky for us none of these got damaged but we had to find our walking poles as they had been kicked away with the canister.
We got out of our tent to find that the cook and the cooks mate got burnt during the explosion, on their arms and legs. They were quite fortunate as the burns were not that bad and as we had a first aid kit we started to administer first aid to them both. Eventually we were in a position to return back to bed and try to get some much needed sleep before climbing the highest mountain in the High Atlas!
Despite last nights events we had a 3:45 am alarm call for breakfast and get ready to start walking at 4:45 (note the GPS time is BST which was 1 hour ahead of Moroccan time).
Today we climbed the highest peak in the Atlas Mountains, Jebel Toubkal. The walk started off quite steep but as we got closer to the summit the paths eased a bit. We spent some time at the summit celebrating, taking photos and taking in the spectacular views around.
Today we walked 8.43km which took us 7hrs 12mins. We climbed a total of 1,545m.
GPS Stats
At the top of Toubkal
What the front of the tent should look like
After the fire!
Almost there, it's just behind us!
At the top
Taking in the views
Being arty!
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