UKC

Stumbled across this place online, but could find zero information about climbing. Has anyone been? It looks almost Wadi Rum-esque.

Purely academic at the moment of course; with or without covid, reading the gov.uk travel advice for Algeria isn't particularly encouraging!

In reply to Rharrison:

A range that caught my imagination when young - all those outrageous spiky hills.  Volcanic I believe.   Desmond Bagley set a yarn there - so he travelled there as well.  Flyaway

In reply to Rharrison:

Stay safe always. 

In reply to Fat Bumbly2:

The pictures I've seen all look like sandstone- I've read about the Hoggar mountains further south, which seem to be basalt volcanic plugs similar to Devil's Tower, is this what you mean?

Would be really interested to hear if anyone has been, whether for hiking or climbing.

In reply to Rharrison:

Yes, I've been there, walked 120 miles with a French company over the course of two weeks, looking at rock art mostly. It's a fascinating place and in winter the weather is very comfortable. The rock is sandstone. There are lots of pillars and I think you could do some really good climbing. But the authorities are very suspicious - they wouldn't let me take binoculars in - so you would want to get confirmation that rock-climbing was OK before you went if that was the main aim of your trip. 

My photos here http://www.learnedtraveller.com/algeria-2008/tassili-najjer/

In reply to Arbu:

Those photos are amazing, the prehistoric (how old is that?) paintings seem a lot more detailed than others I've seen pictures of.

In reply to Tyler:

Thanks. The oldest art is considered to be about 12,000 years old, but it dates from all periods from then. Our guides took us to see the best artwork but I remember walking away from the group a bit once and finding yet more art. So I fear that the authorities might not like rock climbing there out of concern that you would damage some of the artworks - there really are so many.

In reply to Rharrison:

I've not been to the Tassili, but have seen pictures of the Area which looks good. Most of the climbing has been done by french folk. There was a guidebook to climbing in the Area available in french.

I visited the Hoggar about 30 yrs ago before things went tits up in Algeria. One of the best climbing trips I've ever been on. Flew into Tamanrasset with my mate Fast Eddy - It was my first ever flight, sunrise as we flew across the Sahara.

We stayed round Tam for a few days and climbed local to there. Good climbing, some on old Volcanic plugs. Tam was an amazing place - very remote with Tourag tribesmen wandering around - Tall and dressed in blue robes.

Then we got a lift into the desert and camped near Asakrem in an area with lots of volcanic plugs which we climbed on. We climbed routes up to about E2 and they were all good. Not an area to have an accident though. We only saw a very few people there and one day a huge camel train went by. The only other climbers we saw were an Italian party led by Giancarlo Grassi - famous alpinist sadly died in an accident some time ago.

Lucky to have been there. So many memories. If you search the net there is an account of a british trip there in the late 1950's

In reply to Arbu and Matt Podd:

Great photos Arbu (and blog in general), and sounds like quite a trip Matt. I will have to get there one day, whether climbing is on the menu or not.

In reply to Rharrison:

Mix up... Hoggar is the volcanic s. Deff sandstone, great photos on the thread

In reply to Rharrison: The book Merveilles Du Tassili N'Ajjer by Jean-Dominique Lajoux has many b&w photos of the cave art and some of cliffs and towers. It says one cliff, situated at the Tafelalet Col on the camel route between Djanet and Rhat, is between 300 & 350 metres high, though the photo only shows the bottom 30 metres. The book is downloadable from https://b-ok.cc/book/2333934/1930b8. The file format is DJVU however.