The mountains are awesome with giant boulders, scree covered rock and steep snow covered gullies giving some excellent climbing and scrambling. The snow was well compacted and remained frozen in most places making progress good with crampons and ice axe.

On the summit day as we gained altitude I found it increasingly hard to keep going and decided to count steps to give myself a target before briefly resting. Toubkal plays a cruel trick known as a false summit. When you think you can see the top in sight it reveals a ridge with shear drops (but great views!) about 1Km long which you traverse eventually reaching the summit marked with a giant triangle.

I was the last of our group to reach the top at about 1pm on Sunday, a very moving experience. With the Sahara to one side and the rest of the Atlas mountain range to the other the view was fantastic. We stayed for about fifteen minutes taking photo's and congratulating each other but due to the cold and biting wind we started back down.

The weather was good with deep blue skies allowing us great views throughout the trip until on the last day, back down to approximately 3500m when we had overnight snow up to about 1m which slowed our descent.

We eventually met the mules as arranged beneath the snow line and made our way (now without our rucksacks!) back to the Berber village of Imlil.

This was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done but what an experience!

Thank you to everyone who supported me, your prayers and encouragement helped me get there.

I am now collecting the sponsorship money and would be grateful if this could be completed as soon as possible.

Daren Cummings