Inhospitable Morocco
The winds were relentless and the trail had disappeared into scree, but the views were just endless
I was hiking high above the Dades river valley, deep within the Atlas mountain range, the spine of Morocco. I had started out huffing and puffing in the warm late afternoon sun, but a few hundred feet up, the cold gusts of winds from the snow-capped peaks absorbed all my surface moisture, chilling me to the bone. But the views were just getting better, and that prodded me on.
And finally, the vista of the beautiful Dades river valley finally opened up. Tiny fields lay beside a meandering river, with red brick houses of a small village scattered along the steep slopes of the canyon the river had cut through. In the distance, the river disappeared through a narrow gorge it cut downstream on its way to the Atlantic, while the backdrop of a long line of snow-capped peaks reminded me that winter was not yet over in this high desert.
This is one exposure from that vista point, shot at 1/500s at ISO 800 at F11.
Dades Gorge
Morocco