Crossing Lac Iriki on Foot
Four days from Foum Zguid, across a dry lake bed and into the dunes of Erg Chegaga.
As Featured In
Condé Nast Traveler Spain Condé Nast Traveler España, "Nómadas" VOGUE Greece The Telegraph Harper's Bazaar TelQuel MR. TRIPPERA lake you can walk across
Almost everyone crosses Iriki in a vehicle. It takes about five hours.
Lac Iriki is a dry lake in southern Morocco, between Foum Zguid and the Erg Chegaga dune field. It held water seasonally until the Drâa was dammed upstream. What is left is a vast flat pan, cracked and pale, that fills only in exceptional rain years.
The 4x4 crossing between Foum Zguid and M'Hamid runs straight over it and takes five to six hours. It is a good drive. But you see the lake through a window, at a speed that flattens it into scenery.
Walking it takes three days, with a camel caravan carrying the camp and a cook travelling with the group. You cross the pan on the second day, roughly 17 kilometres in a straight line with no shade and no landmark, and you sleep on it. That is the whole point of the route, and it is the only way to understand the scale of the thing.
4
Days
38 km
On foot
2
Nights in the open
1
Night at camp
2 to 12
Guests, private
Start: Foum Zguid · Finish: Umnya Desert Camp, then M'Hamid El Ghizlane · October to April
The Route, Day by Day
Foum Zguid to Erg Chegaga, on foot
Foum Zguid to the western rim
8 kmMeet at Foum Zguid in the morning. A short transfer puts you at the trailhead, then roughly 8 km on foot onto the western rim of the Iriki basin. It is a deliberately gentle first day: enough to get the pack settled and the legs moving, and enough distance that the last village is out of sight before you stop. First bivouac on the rim, looking east across the pan you will cross tomorrow.
Straight across the lake bed
17 kmThe long day, and the reason to come. Around 17 km directly across Iriki. The surface is hard cracked pan, not sand, so the walking is fast and flat, but there is no shade and no landmark in any direction. The horizon stops behaving normally: distances collapse, and a bush two kilometres away can look like a person a hundred metres off. You walk in the cool of the morning, take a long halt through the worst of the heat under a shade tarp the camels carry, and finish at the eastern edge where the sand begins. Second bivouac.
From hard pan into the erg
13 kmThe terrain changes completely in a single morning. Around 13 km, starting on the last of the flat and climbing into the soft western dunes of Erg Chegaga. This is the hardest walking of the route, and the shortest: soft sand costs roughly a quarter more effort than the same distance on a path. You drop down to Umnya Desert Camp in the late afternoon. Hot shower, a real bed, dinner, and the telescope out once it is properly dark.
Departure
Optional walkBreakfast at camp. A last walk up the dune above it if you want one, and most people do, then the private 4x4 back to M'Hamid El Ghizlane for onward travel.
What makes it different
Why walk Iriki rather than the dunes
- ✓ A dry lake bed, not dunes: hard flat pan underfoot, white to the horizon, unlike anything else you walk on in Morocco
- ✓ A genuine point to point, starting at Foum Zguid and finishing at Umnya on the far side of the erg
- ✓ Two terrains in one short route, the lake bed and then the high western dunes
- ✓ Camel supported throughout, so you walk with a daypack only
- ✓ A cook travels with the group and prepares every meal in the field
- ✓ The shortest itinerary we run that is still a real crossing rather than a loop
Questions
Where exactly is Lac Iriki?
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Can you actually walk across Lac Iriki, or is it a 4x4 route?
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How hard is it?
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Is there shade on the lake bed?
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Where do you sleep?
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When is the best time to do it?
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What about the stars out there?
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How many people?
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What does it cost?
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Request Dates
Every crossing is private
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The Other Routes
