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Hotel Ali (Marrakech)

This is the most common stopping off point for mountaineers heading up to Toubkal.  Here you can get the latest information and meet like minded individuals.

From Richard Knight: Ali (hotel & Bureau de Change) seems to be run by two pretty sisters and a bloke, all of whom give every sign of actively wanting to make the visitor welcome, plus another bloke who can be surly and unhelpful, just for fun. Ali (restaurant) seems to be under different management, sometimes slick and constructive, sometimes couldn't care less.

Auberge Lepiney

Also from Richard Knight: "We were rapidly snapped up by M Bouredda of the Auberge Lepiney (and when I say "rapidly, I mean rapidly!) and borne off up the hill in his Kangoo - spotless body work, but the engine needs seeing to, badly! At the Auberge we were transferred to Hassan with a white mule, for 200 dh up to the refuge, and 300 dh back, after two nights there, on condition that we stayed the night at the Bouredda Auberge on return (same price as Ali, but with supper as well as breakfast).

Hassan charming, and courteous, both ways.

Auberge Lepiney appeared to have forgotten that we were coming, when we got back, and once that was sorted had also forgotten supper! I wish we hadn't reminded them! Auberge spotlessly clean, but one of the hardest beds I've slept on yet!

Hassan suggested, and then fixed a Grand Taxi back for 300 dh, from the Lepiney, all the way into Marrakech, to within walking range of Ali.
(His courtesy showed itself, in coming along for 0830, to check that the taxi had turned up and everything was agreed.)

Only seriously negative vibe for me was the black bin liner of clapped out crampons that were being foisted outside the refuge onto a credulous french family by an arrogant, over full of him self, plump local, very proud of his Marathon des Sables gilet, wearing day & night, a brightly coloured wooly bonnet. I assume that the crampons, which this death dealer was fitting onto trainers, and the lightest sort of bootees, had been abandoned by visitors. Obviously, in winter conditions, anyone with an ounce of wits brings his own kit (and in any case trusts only his own kit), and those without wits should not go up, but that is in an ideal world! Someone really does need to go through the pile and scrap the worst, and try to repair those that can be repaired, and, in any case, replace all the straps. I appreciate that as with AIDS drugs, there is a price hurdle to be jumped if reliable crampons and boots are to be available for the use of people living on Moroccan incomes. Should the CAF-Maroc be twisting arms in the Alps?"