In April 2013, Patrik Aufdenblatten (Switzerland) and my longtime friend Ines Papert (Germany) joined me for a trip to the beautiful village of Taghia in the Atlas Mountains, where there are many limestone big walls up to 1,000m tall, with much potential. We hoped to climb a new route on Jebel Tadrarate (2,803m) after first hearing about the wall from Kurt Albert and Toni Arbones, who opened the route Antropecene in 2007.

We used mules to hike the three hours into the village, as there is no road. From there we made the two-hour hike to the wall, crossing many handmade bridges. At the base of the wall we discovered a large cave, which would be our home base for the next 10 days. The wall is not very high (about 400m) but is very smooth and steep. We chose a line 100m right of Antropecene. [Editor’s note: At least four additional routes exist on the southwest face: Raum der Wünsche (Helling-Kohbach-Petters-Whitehouse, 2009), La Rouge Berbère (Guillaume-Ravier-Thivel, 2002), Sul filo della Notte (Larcher-Oviglia-Paissan, 2003), and L’Axe du Mal (Bodet-Cortial-Petit-Piola-Robert, 2003.)]

On our first morning we woke up to our surroundings covered with snow. (Taghia is at ca 2,000m so it is not unusual to have snow into mid-April.) Once started, we used a power drill to place bolts. Two of us would climb while one rested or brought more supplies from Taghia. Higher on the route we used a portaledge, climbing capsule-style. It’s our belief that the route is not over-bolted—we placed 80 bolts over nine pitches, including the belays. It often took us up to a full day to establish one pitch, sometimes even more. We reached the top after 10 days.

With only a few days remaining in Taghia, we hoped to redpoint the climb over two days. With Patrik being the strongest climber, Ines and I supported him, and he was successful in free climbing all the pitches, the easiest being 6b and the hardest two at 8a. The locals suggested we call the climb Azazar (400m, 8a), after a beautiful plant that grows in the area.

Lisi Steurer, Austria