Algeria has just opened its doors to visa on arrival. This gave us the perfect opportunity to explore the desert in the South. Although the check-in counter at Geneva airport had never heard of our type of visa we had no trouble making it to our final destination of Djanet. The internal flight across the desert was 4 hours long, which really gave us the scale of this huge country. Algeria is 90% desert and is the largest country in Africa.
Traveling during Ramadan might not have been our smartest move. Getting food and water was hard to come by in the more populated areas. But after 10 minutes of driving we parked in the shade behind a huge boulder and sat down in th desert for lunch. Immediately I started examining the rock. How was the quality, how secure were the flakes, how dense was the sandstone and featuresome in general.
Our first destination was the gorge of Essendilene. Our drivers knew exactly where to go as we left the tarmac road at some seemingly insignificant point. Driving around monoliths, dunes and through wide valleys. We parked up under some trees, the end of the valley. This would be our base for the next few days. A small local settlement was about 100m away underneath a sheer cliff of about 60m. Within 30 minutes we had scrambled up the back of the cliff and all 6 of us had jumped off landing next to the settlement. It was good to get one successful jump straight away. We had done research on the area, via fatmap and google to try and find suitable cliffs to climb and jump, but with little tourism in the area and very little information online. It was hard to know what to expect. I told the team before we left that we might not find anything to jump, but we’ll have an adventure in the desert either way.
Towers are always an aesthetic challenge to me. There is no “easy way” to summit.. 100 meters from our camp sat tower 140 meters in total but separated from another cliff by a gully. I attempted to start the climb up the main face. After climbing for 40 meters with only 2 bits of gear, I was hesitant the rest of the climb would be any better. The climbing was easy but always nerve wrecking, any foothold or crimp could crumble away. I traversed to the left and we instead decided to use the gully to access as high as we could up the tower. In the niche between the two towers we now only had 2 pitches to climb before the summit. Marco lead the first pitch, dirty but relatively good quality and well protected. The second pitch was slightly harder but more short lived, cleaner but still well protected. With the winds picking up in the gorge below we geared up as quickly as we could, methodically but swifty. Giving each other a buddy check before we left off and landed in the dry river bed below.
The next day we found a natural arch sat in the middle of a wide valley. A feature begging for us to climb it. We walked around the whole structure looking for a line of weakness. A narrowing chimney provided ample trad protection that led all the way to the summit. Starting wide enough to bridge it slowly became more and more constricting, inviting me further into the depth of the chimney. The last few meters were on quality rock but the constraint of the chimney made for some awkward moves. It was now less of a chimney and more like vertical caving, squeezing through a hole and into the raw sunlight above.
Tilliliene gorge had some sport routes, bolted by some Germans some years ago. As noted by Marco, “The Germans get around with their drill and bolts!” Though unfortunately the lower bolts had been stolen, most presumably by the bedouins or locals god knows for what purpose. A huge cave sat opposite these routes and we could see the sky through a tiny gap in the roof. At 50m high it would be high enough for us to jump from the roof above.
Marco wanted to climb a route to the left while I wanted to find the easiest route around the back to guarantee the jump before the sunset. It would be a race to see who could get to the exit first. Nearing the exit a small rock fell down a gully, creating a bigger slide and then eventually it fell through the roof of the cave echoing through the gorge. The split teams met at the exit point at the same time, though Marco and Martin got to enjoy a nice 2 pitch climb up the main face. We jumped one by one taking a 90 degree left turn ( so as to not hit the opposite side of the canyon.)
The trip had been a huge success, after not being sure what we would find, we managed to open 6 new jumps, 3 of which were over 100m of freefall, we opened 5 pitches of climbing with plenty more to explore. The quality and beauty of the area is enough for me to return again and again. We managed to squeeze in one more jump at sunset before we left for the town of Djanet the next day. After sleeping under the stairs on the sand for the last 5 days we treated ourselves to a hotel room. It was nice to rest on a mattress with the noise of the rain outside. The brits have driven into town and the rain starts in the Sahara, it figures…
