The High Atlas Mountains in Morocco

Home ❯ The High Atlas Mountains in Morocco

The High Atlas Mountains in Morocco

Duration

3 days / 2 nights

Starting point

Marrakech

End point

Marrakech

Description

The High Atlas Mountains in Morocco are part of the great Atlas range, which stretches some 2,500 km across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Its highest peak is Jebel Toubkal, at 4,167 meters, in southwestern Morocco. These mountains separate the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast from the Sahara Desert and are mainly inhabited by Berber communities, whose culture is still very much alive in the region.

Highlights

Tour itinerary

The High Atlas Mountains in Morocco

The Atlas Mountains are home to many plant and animal species unique to Africa, often more similar to those of Europe. Many of them are endangered and some have already disappeared. They include the Barbary macaque, the Atlas bear (Africa’s only native bear species, now extinct), the leopard, the Barbary stag, the Barbary sheep, the Atlas lion (extinct in the wild), the North African elephant and the aurochs (both extinct), Cuvier’s gazelle, the northern bald ibis, the Atlas viper, the Atlas cedar, the black pine and the Algerian oak.

Geology

The bedrock of most of Africa was formed in the Precambrian and is much older than the Atlas range. The Atlas was formed in three major stages of Earth’s history. The first, about 300 million years ago in the Paleozoic, created the Anti-Atlas as a result of the collision between Africa and North America, which were then joined. That range once rivaled today’s Himalayas, and its remains can be seen today in the Appalachians in North America. The second stage took place in the Mesozoic, when the Earth’s crust stretched and separated the continents, forming large sedimentary basins; most of the rocks that make up the High Atlas today were deposited under the ocean at that time. Finally, in the Cenozoic, the collision between Africa and Europe raised the mountains that form the Atlas today, the same process that formed the Alps and the Pyrenees and closed the Strait of Gibraltar. Interestingly, the crust beneath the Atlas is relatively thin for such a high range, and recent studies suggest that deep processes in the Earth’s mantle helped raise the High and Middle Atlas.