Oukaïmeden

People were on this plateau long before it had a road. Slabs of stone across the grazing ground carry engravings — horned animals, human figures and weapons — part of the wider body of rock art found in the High Atlas, where the engraved images on Jebel Yagour, on the massif to the east, have been dated to between about 1000 and 500 BC. Those around Oukaïmeden are mostly older, dated to between about 6000 and 2000 BC with some later, and show that hunters and then herders seeking summer pasture came up here in prehistory. Grazing has continued ever since: villages in the valleys below have long used the plateau as an agdal, a communal summer pasture whose opening date is agreed collectively and enforced by the community, a long-established form of collective resource management in the mountains.

Skiing came later, when visitors from Marrakech looked for snow within reach of the city and found it here. A refuge and the first simple lifts followed, and Oukaïmeden became the highest winter sports station in Africa, its skiing ground spread between about 2,600 and 3,200 metres and served by a handful of lifts. Hotels and chalets grew around the road head, most of them used only for part of the year.

Since independence the station has remained small and seasonal. It depends entirely on snowfall, which has become less reliable, and on day visitors from Marrakech, who now come in numbers all year — for snow in winter, for cool air and walking in summer. In 2025 a funded programme of works was announced to add pistes and install new lifts. The plateau has also long drawn scientists: its height and clear skies support the Oukaïmeden Observatory, which surveys small Solar System bodies. The earthquake that struck Al Haouz province on 8 September 2023, killing nearly 3,000 people and destroying many mountain villages, had its epicentre some 55 km from the plateau.

Two ways of using the same ground meet here. The older is pastoral and Amazigh: families from the Ourika and neighbouring valleys bring flocks up when the agdal opens, build temporary shelters and take them down again at the end of the season, following rules about grazing that are argued over and renewed at village level. Tashelhit and Central Atlas Tamazight are the languages of that world, and its calendar is set by snowmelt and pasture rather than by holidays.

The other is the resort. Ski hire stalls, instructors, mule handlers offering rides, cafés and hotel staff make their living from visitors, most of them Moroccan families from Marrakech and Casablanca who come for a day in the snow rather than for serious skiing. Weekends are noisy and crowded, with sledging, snowball fights and long lunches; weekdays out of season can be nearly empty.

Manners follow mountain Morocco. Greetings come before business, hospitality is offered readily, and bargaining over the price of a lesson, a sledge or a mule ride is expected and good-humoured. Dress is conservative once away from the slopes, and the rock engravings are treated as a shared inheritance rather than a curiosity: walking on them, chalking them or taking rubbings is strongly discouraged.

Only a few hundred people live on the plateau permanently; most of those working here come up from villages in the Ourika valley and go home in the evening or at the end of the week. The population multiplies at weekends in the snow season and again in high summer, then falls away almost completely in the quiet months, and that swing shapes everything from water supply to the opening of cafés.

Work is seasonal and varied: hotel and café staff, ski and sledge hire, instructors, guides, mule and donkey handlers, road clearing after snow, and the stalls selling gloves, hats and hot drinks along the roadside. Herding remains important for valley families who hold rights on the pasture, and some households combine flocks in summer with resort work in winter.

The pressing issue is snow. Warmer, drier winters have shortened and weakened the season on which the station's winter income depends, and years pass with very little cover. Water, waste and the pressure of large day crowds on a fragile plateau are the other recurring concerns, along with the state of the access road and the distance to schools, shops and clinics in the valleys below.

Eating at the station is mountain food, cooked simply and served hot. Harira, the tomato, lentil and chickpea soup, is the standard defence against the cold; tagines of chicken with preserved lemon and olives or of lamb with vegetables come to the table in their conical pots; and brochettes and kefta are grilled over charcoal in front of the cafés. Couscous appears on Fridays and for groups, steamed above a broth of meat and root vegetables.

Breakfast and snacks are Moroccan standards adapted to cold air: msemen, the layered griddle bread, folded round honey or jam; baghrir pancakes soaked in butter and honey; hard-boiled eggs with cumin salt; and amlou, the almond and argan spread, eaten with bread. Roasted nuts, dried figs and dates are sold from stalls, and in the snow season hot drinks outsell everything else.

Mint tea is constant, poured from height into small glasses and sweetened heavily; in winter it is often made with wormwood, thyme or sage. Coffee is drunk strong, and fresh orange juice is easier to find lower down in the Ourika valley, where riverside restaurants grill lamb and chicken beside the water. Alcohol is not sold in ordinary cafés and plays no part in the life of the plateau.