The Best MTB Trails in the Atlas Mountains

The best MTB trails in the Atlas Mountains were not built for bikes. They are mule paths, cut along the contours between villages so a loaded animal could walk them, and they have been in continuous use for centuries. That accident of history produced some of the best natural singletrack in North Africa: consistently graded, never too steep to walk, and polished smooth by generations of use.

There is no trail centre here, no signage, and no maintenance crew. What follows is our own list, in the order we would ride them.

1. The Kik Plateau. The one everyone remembers

A high, open plateau at around 1,700m with a dirt track running along its full length. Over 20km of near-continuous riding with the whole High Atlas wall on one side and the Haouz plain dropping away on the other. It is not technical, there is nothing here that will catch out a competent rider, but it is fast, and the sense of space is unlike anything else in the range.

We use it as the final day of the 8-day tour because it is the right note to end on: no survival, just speed and view. It also works beautifully on a gravel bike.

2. Tizi Tzikerte into the Ouazzaden. The one you earn

The pass is not rideable upward. You hike, and the mules carry the bikes. A genuinely old-fashioned mountain day that takes most of a morning. What is on the other side justifies every minute: rough, steep, committing singletrack dropping into the Ouazzaden valley on terrain that sees almost no traffic.

This is the most technical descent we guide. Loose rock, exposure on the outside edge, and no easy line for long stretches. It is on our enduro trip and nothing else, and we are strict about who rides it.

3. Oukaimeden top-to-bottom. The highest riding in Morocco

Morocco’s ski station at 2,660m, which in summer becomes the highest trailhead in the country. You can drive to the top, which makes it the one place in the Atlas where a genuine uplift day is possible. The descent runs technical singletrack off the station, over the Tizi Addi, and down through the Tachedirt valley — well over 1,000m of vertical in one line.

The air is noticeably thin at the top. Riders who fly in and go straight up feel it on the first climb.

4. Tizi n'Tamatert to the Imenane. The best introduction

The classic Atlas pass at 2,300m, an hour and a half from Marrakech. The climb from Imlil is about 6km and 540m — real work on a normal bike, very pleasant on an e-bike — and from the top a long traverse runs into the Imenane valley through a string of villages linked by irrigation channels.

If you have one day in Morocco and want to understand what the riding here is like, this is the day. It is on both our MTB and e-bike day tours.

5. The Azzaden river trail. The prettiest

Not the hardest and not the fastest, but the one people photograph. The trail follows the Azzaden river through walnut and cherry terraces, crossing and recrossing the water, with Toubkal standing at the head of the valley. In spring the whole thing is green and loud with running water.

Technically it is intermediate — rocky in places, a few exposed sections — and it appears on almost every multi-day trip we run because it is simply the nicest way to move between the Imlil and Ouirgane valleys.

6. The Ijoukak riverbeds. The strangest

Dry wadis below the Tizi n'Test road, ridden as trails. Boulder-strewn, technical, and completely unlike anything else in the range. You are riding the floor of a watercourse between gorge walls, picking lines through rock that was rearranged by the last flood. There is a rickety bridge crossing that everybody photographs.

7. Ait Zitoune to Imi n'Tala. The remote one

Deep in the western part of the range, where the villages get further apart and nobody comes. Long traverses on narrow trail, a few short carries over broken ground, and a final descent into Imi n'Tala that runs for most of a kilometre without needing a pedal stroke.

There is no road access to much of this, which is why it stays as good as it is.

Can you ride these without a guide?

Some of them, with difficulty. There is no signage, mapping apps are unreliable here because the paths change, and many trails cross private land and village terraces where riding without a word to anyone causes genuine offence. The riverbeds carry real flood risk.

We would say this even if we did not run tours: the value of a local guide in the Atlas is not route-finding, it is knowing which trail is rideable this week and which household to ask before crossing their land.