The Bougmez Underfoot

Dramatic / almost hostile

1200 Depart / 1400 Gorge / 1600 Pass / Tsiki — Sunset and Blue Hour. One day. Two runners. A mule guide named Bassouz.

High Atlas foothills, southern Morocco · 31°41′N 6°27′W · 1,800 m · November 12, 2025

A single day’s route from the Aït Bougmez Valley through Happy Valley Gorge to the Tsiki Pass — three locations, gorge to summit, daylight to dark.

Happy Valley

[PROSE: arrival, the road giving way to dirt, “Happy Valley” by name. Donkeys loaded with hay, terraced fields stepping up toward the gorge mouth.]

[FIELD NOTE: placeholder — short line about Bassouz]

Scale

[PROSE: the country opens up after the gorge. Switchbacks cut into scree. The runner is a dot against the terrain.]

Achmed and Aziza on the Tsiki switchback.

When the Light Drops

[PROSE: dusk. Ten degrees in twenty minutes. The pass changes character.]

[PULL QUOTE: placeholder — the brief’s ‘dramatic / almost hostile’ lands hardest here]

One day.

Village to summit to dark.

• 12:00 Depart: Leave the retreat. Drive south toward Aït Bougmez.
• 14:00 Happy Valley Gorge: Bassouz meets the group. Mule, donkeys, slot canyon.
• 15:00 AGA Mountain Field: Open terrain. Four frames. The weakest light of the day.
• 16:00 Tsiki Pass: Switchbacks, scree, ridgeline. The country opens.
• 18:30 Sunset: Golden hour on the pass. Two-figure silhouettes.
• 19:30 Blue hour: Speedlight and headlamp. Flash on rock spires.
• 21:30 Return: Hammam and hot tub. The day is done.

What the country gives. What the light takes.

[PROSE: what the gorge and pass give — natural framing, scale, the mule guide, the runners as figures in a landscape that doesn’t care about them.]

[PROSE: what the light takes — the compressed schedule, the lost detail shots, the gender gap, the techniques that happened by accident not by plan.]

Kit: Canon EOS R5 Mark II, Canon EOS R5, RF 50mm f/1.2L USM, RF 35mm f/1.4L VCM, RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, Speedlight + Nanlite.