In May 2007, seven Audley employees and 15 Audley clients trekked to the summit of 4,167 metre-high Jebel Toubkal in Morocco, raising over £8,000 for the Audley Charity Portfolio. Audley's Nick Coates gives you an insight into the pain and pleasure he experienced…

I couldn’t remember who to blame for having had the original idea. I couldn’t remember how I had been roped into this. But I can tell you I was cold, tired and grumpy at 4.30 in the morning in the Moroccan High Atlas Mountains. I had been forcibly separated from my warm sleeping bag by one of our energetic and goodhumoured Berber guides (all seemingly named ‘Mohammed’), as we were about to embark on the trek to the summit of Mount Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa at 4,167 metres. I knew we needed to be at the top for 10am, if we were to leave enough time to retrace all our steps of the previous day, back down the valley to the small village of Imlil and our luxurious kasbah.

This was the final day of the first ever Audley Travel sponsored charity trek. Our group comprised seven of us from the office, 15 guests, quite a few Mohammeds, several mules and Alan Ward, award winning mountain leader and a great friend of Audley’s (Alan is also a hardy porter, medic, pace-setter and raconteur). A few days previously, after our short flight from London to Marrakech, we had set up camp at the wonderful Kasbah du Toubkal, breathtakingly situated at the foot of the mountains in the National Park. Over several pleasant acclimatisation treks passing over high mountain cols to discover pretty Berber villages, I nervously eyed up the others, attempting to ascertain if I would indeed be the slowest when it came to the ascent itself. Then it was time for the long trek up to the Neltner Refuge, a staging post two thirds of the way up the mountain, where we found tents already pitched for us (by a Mohammed) for our one night under canvas. And here we are, 4.30 in the morning and, in my case, a little grumpy.

I won’t talk too much about the summit day. I think its fair to say that we all found the final ascent challenging, and some of us suffered from headaches due to the altitude (but nothing more serious) and 48 we all would swear that the distance back down was double what we remembered coming up. But, we got to the top (see photo as proof ) and, as a group, we bonded somewhere on that mountain. As a footnote, throughout the trip Alan had sagely advised us to ‘take our time’, to ‘respect the altitude’ and, most importantly, that ‘it’s not a race’. Despite this, for the sake of posterity, I must tell you this; had it been a race, I won.