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This is some free and opinionated information that I learnt on a quickly organized caving trip between 27/12/2000 and 6/1/2001 to the region around Beni Mellal in Morocco. I hope it is useful. Read the more personal article if you have the stomach for it. I hope this is useful. I can be contacted at julian@goatchurch.org.uk.
There's not much English knowledge to go on. It was a French colony, so the French have had the pick of the caves for many years since Casteret's time in the 1920s. They are generally not known for being magnanimous with their information. Moroccans often know French but rarely learn English, so it is a good idea to brush up on your French before you go out there. They may not know French any better than you do, but it is better than nothing if your Arabic and Berber is nonexistent.
There's limestone distributed in all parts of the country and many long and deep caves have been found. Morocco is a favourite place for cavers from England to go on reconnaissance trips, but none of these, to my knowledge, has been followed by a fully blown expedition discovering new caves. The Westminster Speleological Group went in 1980 (see P. Hart's reports). A 1999 report on a recce trip can be found on the web page of Imperial College Caving Club. Their plans for 2001 are at geocities.iccaving. Also, with some hunting around their site, the plans for a 2002 trip preceded by a 2001 reconnaissance trip is mentioned Liverpool University Pothole Club.
Mohamed Tijani and several others have formed a club called Les Adorateurs de la Montagne in Beni Mellal. They are not well equipped, but are eager to assist in the logistics of any friendly caving expedition to their country. There's another group, Le Club Marocain de la Montagne in Marrakesh which I don't know much about. Mohamed can be contacted through his "club" email at lesadorateursdelamontagne@caramail.com. His friend Abderrahman Tissoukla is a professional mountain guide and very useful. As well as the logistics of caving, he can arrange mountain and desert trekking/land rover/mountain biking trips anywhere in Morocco for a reasonable rate. He has a web page at Beni Mellal where he can be contacted. His CV is at Abderrahman TISSOUKLA.
There's a lot of independent work from other countries in Europe, but there does not seem to be any one organization in Morocco itself coordinating it all. Mohamed Habib Hamdie whom we met, gathers all the literature he can on the subject of Morocco but doesn't appear to publish a report on it. Even so, he claims that the area which has had the least attention is the central atlas area, in the vicinity of Beni Mellal. Places like Agadir, with its claim on the longest cave of Africa, are probably worked out.
My limited experience of caving expeditions suggests that since all the well-known cave entrances will have been picked off in the last eighty years, a scattergun approach to finding some new ones by striking it lucky is not going to work. This would seem particularly the case in the mountains of Morocco, which seem well-populated - if the goatherders haven't spotted an entrance over the years, then you in a couple of weeks are unlikely to. I would recommend working methodically by picking a very small area, either a valley or a mountain top, of which all you are going to do is within walking distance of your base camp. You would then begin with a careful survey of all the known caves and their entrances so that you could plot them all on a good large scale map. With good organization and practice at surveying this could be achieved in one expedition and actually produce something more useful than an inventory of caves which you have ticked off.
Your complete set of data, maps and photographs should be printed out on good quality paper and left at a local farm or possibly in the local school where students can see it if they are interested. This is the best place to archive a copy: with the people who live in the area of the cave entrances. When other cavers stumble across your valley in 50 years time they are more likely to find this evidence of your work than if it is only kept in a locked drawer in some dusty office or in a trunk in your attic.
If you follow my advice, two things might happen. First, you could find stunning leads inside the caves that have been overlooked by previous visitors. This happens with CUCC in Austria frequently, and one of the ways we find them is by having such a complete survey of all the caves in the area that we can guess where it will be good to look next. Second, if you stick around in the area for long enough and get to know the shepherds who are combing the land with their goats day after day, they might remember entrances which they didn't tell the French about when they originally visited on their grand tours of Morocco.
The fact that there are people wandering all over the hills on foot all the time (unlike most caving areas where there are either no people, or they stick to paths due to the vegetation) means you won't need to waste time prospecting. Of course, a pessimist would say that the first caving team to have reached the area, for example the French in the 1950s, would have been shown all the entrances and already gone down them. Now, it is probably true that in the last thousand years every cave entrance will have been found by at least one person at one time. But if a bunch of cavers were simply to arrive on their doorstep and ask to be shown all the caves they will not get a comprehensive list. People's memories are not that good (and they don't write any of it down), and they have better things to do than look for and remember your caves.
This is where a complete set of caving documentation and a multi-year expedition to the same place could make a difference to you while you are away. If the shepherds know you are coming back again, they might sit on the tops of their hills sharing their lunch with other shepherds and discuss you and your crazy habits. (What other things are they going to talk about?). One of them might have a son in school who every day walks past a beautiful photographic poster of a cave on the wall which you have donated, and is as fascinated by your maps and caving adventures as you are. One thing might lead to another, and when you come back next year the people might say, well actually we recommend you try this valley on the other side of the mountains where the French have never been before.
Possibly this is all a bit fanciful, but many people I met were genuinely interested and wanted to help. The problem was that they do not know exactly what you are after, so leaving behind copies of all your reports and cave surveys gives them a chance to learn what it is. Plus it sounds like the right thing to do.
We never went hungry. If you choose an area in the mountains to work on and come back year after year, I imagine a good relationship could be made with the locals for a room to stay in and use of their mules to carry tackle up the slopes. You will have to fetch food from the market which may be a day's walk away, or pay other people to buy it for you. Cooking is done on large gas cylinders which you will also have to fetch from market. Carbide can be bought cheaply if you know where to look. I don't, but I know a man who does.
The weather was unusually good to us on our visit (Dec/Jan). We had glorious sunshine every day, but for the week on either side it rained heavily. In the summer it doesn't rain, but it does get quite hot. At night the catabatic winds howl down from the mountains and will freeze you if you are out of doors.
Mobile phones seem to work right up in the mountains, but there is little electricity, so they will be hard to charge. ATMs are the best way to get cash. There are numerous cybercafes in all the cities. No coffee available in the one we went to, but printers and a whole row of guys surfing just like you find anywhere else in the world.
Many trips from England go by road. It takes about a week and is a waste of time. I half wonder if the reason for doing it is so as to be independent of the local economy; to be able to supply your own food, drink, tents, transport, carbide and cooking pots without having to talk to anyone. All these items can be bought or hired in Morocco, so there is no excuse not to fly out with just your caving gear and save a lot of time and possibly money. With judicious packing, each caver can bring at least 50m of rope as well as his own gear. This means that a three week expedition to Morocco can do three weeks of work rather than just one week. If you get bored after the second week there's always plenty of trekking and grockling to do before you fly back.
We only saw dry dusty ones because it was the winter and all the watery ones would have been flooded. There are shaft series, boulder choke caves or active streamways to explore. The caves are warm: a thin furry and an oversuit is more than adequate. For wet caves a thin wetsuit is required for ducks and swimming. There were spits in all the vertical caves we did, but many were dubious or worse, so you will need a bolting kit as well as your survey gear.
Due to the lack of caving gear in Morocco, there is no cave rescue organization. Even if you had some arrangement to fly out rescuers from France or even England, they might not get to you for two days. A caving expedition should aim to be self-sufficient in this department (you would probably get a lot of help from the locals, but they will almost certainly be less well-equipped and experienced than any of you).
If this is not good enough, another alternative is to synchronize your expo with other foreign expos and use them as your back-up. For something really big it is probably best to cultivate a relationship with whatever Spanish cave rescue organization that exists because they are a short ferry trip away from Morocco and can nip down the road.
Below is a photograph of the limestone areas of central Morocco. For further information I recommend visiting the BCRA library or the UBSS library. If you have the ability I recommend you try to get something out of the French because they have a lot of information. On the last day we did obtain a photocopy of the Beni Mellal chapter out of the 1981 inventory of Morroccan caves, in French. The rest of the book can apparently be obtained for free if you know who to ask in Moroccos's Department of Hydrology. We've copied the photocopy and put it in the UBSS library. If you don't want to go that far you can probably get one from me if you ask nicely.
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