The Ascend part two
الصعود
الجزء الثاني
On the lower slopes of the mountain, crickets of all sorts and sizes — with beautiful bright coloured wings jump out in front of your every step. The higher you climb, the less they accompany your upward stride through the vast, changing landscape.
The Sub-Alpine forests of oak and cane apple trees, growing large and strong in the valleys, eventually give way to the rocky meadows of the Middle Atlas. Here smaller cork oaks and conifers, such as Juniper, stand solitarily amid lush heather shrubs, rock roses and lavender, which carpet the larger rocks of scree.
In the borderlands between the Middle Atlas and the High Atlas, at around 2500 metres, the steep slopes bloom with colourful tapestries of thorny Astragalus plants, with its velvety fern-like leaves and its brilliant bell-shaped golden flowers, of white-pink flowering Acantholimon and of yellow flowering Berberis Cretica.
In the Alpine Zone of the High Atlas, above 2500 metres, the air becomes drier—thinner. Most vegetation disappears. Growing out from in between the scree are intricate patches of light-green Vicia Canescens—with its delicate pink-purple flowers—and the tiny Erodium Trichomanifolium—with its velvety white and lilac flowers.
Eventually, towards the summits, there remains little else but bare rock and scree, with some golden-green cushion plants and mounds of dry Atlas Fescue grasses solemnly waving golden-brown in the high-altitude winds.