JEBEL TOUBKAL BY WALTER MITTELHOLZER

WALTER MITTELHOLZER (1894-1937)

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft) 

Morocco 

 In Jebel Toubkal Aerial view, 1932.

The mountain 

Jebel Toubkal  is the high point of the High Atlas as well as Morocco and North Africa . It is located 63 km south of Marrakech, in the province of Al Haouz, inside the national park that bears its name.
The word Toubkal would be a deformation of French origin of the same Amazigh name Tugg Akal or toug-akal  which means "the one who looks up the earth". The people of this region still use this name.  The Toubkal massif is made up of rocks of various natures. Dark rocks of volcanic origin are found on the summits of andesite and rhyolite. Glaciers have left characteristic marks of their passage in the form of valleys in trough. During the Würm glaciation, the present valley of Assif n'Ait Mizane  was occupied by the longest glacier in the Atlas, about 5 km long.
The climate at Jebel Toubkal is mountainous. The snow falls in winter and covers the summit.
In the nineteenth century, the interior of Morocco was still terra incognita for the Europeans and for a long time the jebel Ayachi (3,747 m -12,293ft) ) passed for the highest summit of the High Atlas. In fact, the Toubkal was officially climbed for the first time only on 12 June 1923 by the Marquis de Segonzac, accompanied by Vincent Berger and Hubert Dolbeau. The cairns which they found on the summit had been built by the Berbers of the environs for whom the Toubkal is a holy place dedicated to Sidi Chamarouch (or Chamharouch). A sanctuary is dedicated to him on the way from Imlil to Toubkal.
The ascent of the roof of North Africa attracts a large number of followers of the trekking. This ascent attracts the crowd as much as it does not present great technical difficulties and that the assistance of the muleteers and their mules reduces the physical efforts. The altitude is relatively high (3,200 meters at the shelter and 4,167 meters at the summit).
Climbing
Summer is the most suitable season because snow and snowfalls are absent but brief and violent thunderstorms can occur. The normal route of the southern Ikhibi is the most frequented. From the top a wide panorama is offered to the rewarding gaze of the efforts provided. The vast expanses of the Atlas and the Great South are dominated by the Jebel Sirwa, 50 km to the southeast, and the vast ridge of the Jebel M'Goun, 150 km to the northeast. You can also see the summit of the station of Oukaimden. The tourist wave has altered the lives of the Berber mountaineers living in the neighborhood. Many inhabitants now work in tourism: muleteers, guides, gentists, cooks, transporters. The village of Imlil, the last village accessible by road, from Asni, and just two days' walk north of the Toubkal, is a true "Moroccan Chamonix". Two refuges are located at an altitude of 3,200 meters, two or three hours' walk from the summit. Not far from the summit of Toubkal is another attraction, Lake Ifni, accessible by the Tizi n'Ouanoums Pass (3,664 m) - 12, 021 ft).

The photographer
Walter Mittelholzer was a Swiss aviation pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, travel writer, and also as one of the first aviation entrepreneurs.
Mittelholzer earned his private pilot's license in 1917, and in 1918 he completed his instruction as a military pilot.  On November 5, 1919 he co-founded an air-photo and passenger flight business, Comte, Mittelholzer, and Co. In 1920 this firm merged with the financially stronger Ad Astra Aero. Mittelholzer was the director and head pilot of Ad Astra Aero which later became Swissair.
He made the first North-South flight across Africa. It took him 77 days. Mittelholzer started in Zürich on December 7, 1926, flying via Alexandria and landing in Cape Town on February 21, 1927. Earlier, he had been the first to do serious aerial reconnaissance of Spitsbergen, in a Junkers monoplane, in 1923.  On December 15, 1929 he became the first person to fly over Mt. Kilimanjaro, and planned to fly over Mount Everest in 1930.  In 1931, Mittelholzer was appointed technical director of the new airline called Swissair, formed from the merger of Ad Astra Aero and Balair. Throughout his life he published many books of aerial photographs. He died in 1937 in a climbing accident on an expedition in the Hochschwab massif in Styria, Austria.
Among other Swiss air pioneers, he is commemorated in a Swiss postage stamp issued in January 1977.

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2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL OUANOUKRIM BY WALTER MITTELHOLZER

WALTER MITTELHOLZER (1894-1937)

Jebel Ouanoukrim (4,089 m - 13,415 ft) 

Morocco

The mountain 
Jebel Ouanoukrim  (4,089 m - 13,415 ft)  is a mountain in Morocco located in the Atlas Mountains, south of Marrakech and just southwest of the Jebel Toubkal, the highest point of this country.
It consists of two summits: the Timesguida or Timzguida the highest with 4,089 meters of altitude, and just north of Ras n'Ouanoukrim which culminates at 4,083 meters above sea level; These two peaks are separated by a small pass at an altitude of 3,968 meters. This altitude of 4,089 meters gives the djebel Ouanoukrim the title of the second highest peak in North Africa and Morocco behind the Jebel Toubkal. The whole mountain is included in the National park of Toubkal.

The photographer
Walter Mittelholzer was a Swiss aviation pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, travel writer, and also as one of the first aviation entrepreneurs.
Mittelholzer earned his private pilot's license in 1917, and in 1918 he completed his instruction as a military pilot.  On November 5, 1919 he co-founded an air-photo and passenger flight business, Comte, Mittelholzer, and Co. In 1920 this firm merged with the financially stronger Ad Astra Aero. Mittelholzer was the director and head pilot of Ad Astra Aero which later became Swissair.
He made the first North-South flight across Africa. It took him 77 days. Mittelholzer started in Zürich on December 7, 1926, flying via Alexandria and landing in Cape Town on February 21, 1927. Earlier, he had been the first to do serious aerial reconnaissance of Spitsbergen, in a Junkers monoplane, in 1923.  On December 15, 1929 he became the first person to fly over Mt. Kilimanjaro, and planned to fly over Mount Everest in 1930.  In 1931, Mittelholzer was appointed technical director of the new airline called Swissair, formed from the merger of Ad Astra Aero and Balair. Throughout his life he published many books of aerial photographs. He died in 1937 in a climbing accident on an expedition in the Hochschwab massif in Styria, Austria.
Among other Swiss air pioneers, he is commemorated in a Swiss postage stamp issued in January 1977.

CAP SPARTEL PAINTED BY EUGENE DELACROIX

EUGENE  DELACROIX (1798-1863)

Cap Spartel (315 m - 1, 050 ft) 

Morocco

In View of Tangier from the seashore, Oil on canvas, Private Collection  

The mountain 

Cap Spartel (315 m - 1, 050 ft) or Ras Spartel (in Arabic: رأس سبارتيل) is a promontory of the coast of Morocco, located at the southern entrance of the Strait of Gibraltar, 14 kilometers west of Tangier. Facing Cape Spartel, 44 km to the north, Cape Trafalgar marks the northern entrance to the strait on the Spanish coast. Cape Spartel is often mistakenly indicated as the northernmost point of Africa.

The promontory benefits from a strong rainfall favorable to the vegetation. In ancient times Cape Spartel was called Cape Ampelusium, or Cap of Vineyards.  Under the promontory, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean have dug caves, where the inhabitants of the region used to carve millstones. Today, these spectacular "Hercules caves" are a tourist attraction.
On Cape Spartel, 110 meters above sea level, there is a lighthouse, which began operating on October 15, 1864. Its construction was ordered by Sultan Mohammed IV ben Abderrahman at the request of the consular representatives of the European powers alarmed by the Many shipwrecks occurring off the coast. The light from the lighthouse is visible 30 nautical miles (55.6 km).
Off Cape Spartel is the Spartel Bank, a shoal, some of which wanted to make the legendary island of Atlantis.

The painter 
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture.  He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism.  Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).