SAMAYA X THOMAS DELFINO
DISCOVERING THE LINES OF THE M’GOUN MASSIF
Having left for the High Atlas in March 2023 with the ambition of having a minimal carbon impact, Thomas Delfino tells us about the moments that particularly struck him: the beauty of the landscapes, the incredible playground that the M’Goun massif represents, and the encounters—each more enriching than the last—with the inhabitants of these valleys and mountains.
"I had been wanting to experience adventures in wild and, if possible, exotic environments for a while, outside of my usual setting in the Alps, all while getting there in the cleanest way possible. My grandmother had given me a book for Christmas about the High Atlas in Morocco, and I immediately started imagining the landscapes just by looking at the map, with the snow of the M’Goun mountain range on one side and the desert on the other. We left France by train, then took a ferry to reach Tangier and another train to get to Marrakech. That already marked the beginning of our adventure."
"In the High Atlas, we had a project to make a documentary. For that, I was accompanied by Cody Cirillo, Matthew Tufts, and Evan Rouillard. We tried to highlight the act of skiing down beautiful faces while maintaining the lowest possible carbon impact and engaging with the locals about these environmental issues."
"It was incredibly interesting to share our experience up there with the inhabitants of the territory, because we saw the snowfall as an element of our playground, while the locals of this massif see it as a vital water resource for their agriculture, their herds, and their crops."
"What particularly struck me was one of our descents into a village; it was quite ambitious because we didn't really know what we were getting into. On the ascent, we emerged onto a ridge and didn't know what lay behind it. We knew it was more or less passable because there were villages in the other valley, but we knew nothing about the snow conditions. Finally, our first sight of the valley opposite was magical, with the snow really high and the villages really low. We discovered some beautiful couloirs that went down really low. We committed to them, navigated a bit because there were quite a few cliffs, and eventually arrived in a village where we had a really nice encounter with some young people. A very lovely moment that also perfectly represents what we had come looking for."
