Park Myung-soo on Great Guide 3 in Morocco: Mount Toubkal
The Atlas Mountains I climbed back in 2010
Written by
Earth Village Field Mouse, a travel lifestyle blogger and YouTuber who loves books
In the recent Morocco episodes of MBC every1’s Great Guide 3, Park Myung-soo, Kim Dae-ho, Choi Daniel, and Lee Mu-jin took on the challenge of climbing Mount Toubkal.As I watched, my own memories from 2010 came rushing back—walking toward Toubkal with friends I knew, step by step. Mount Toubkal is the highest peak in Morocco, North Africa, and the Atlas Mountains,with an elevation of 4,167 meters (13,671 feet). For reference, the highest mountain in Africa is Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at 5,895 meters (19,341 feet).
In the show, Park Myung-soo’s group never made it to the summit of Mount Toubkal Morocco. They climbed as far as the refuge at around 3,150 meters, but overnight snowfall and avalanche risk shut the climb down, forcing them to turn back with roughly 1,000 meters left to go. Funny enough, I didn’t reach the summit in 2010 either. The TV team was stopped by the weather, and we got stopped because we took the wrong route.
Maybe it was fate telling both of us to save the summit for another time.
Q. Did Park Myung-soo reach the summit of Toubkal?
No, he didn’t make it all the way to the top. The Great Guide 3 team started their climb at about 1,932 meters and reached the refuge at around 3,150 meters. But overnight, heavy snow piled up and the weather got so bad that the usual trail—and even existing footprints—disappeared.
Local authorities also did not allow anyone to continue toward the summit because of avalanche danger and the risk of getting stranded. It was less a matter of giving up on the climband more a case of the mountain being officially closed for safety.
Q. Can beginners climb Toubkal?
In a normal season, Mount Toubkal is not a peak that absolutely requires technical rock-climbing skills, but you should never underestimate the fact that it’s a 4,000-meter-plus mountain.
The biggest risks are altitude sickness, sudden weather changes, rocky uneven trails, and winter snow and ice. The show captured that well too: steep rocky paths right from the start, then shortness of breath, headaches, and nausea once they got above 3,000 meters.
Especially in snowy months, you’ll need winter gear like crampons and a local guide.
Zeroweight 210g lightweight hiking bag, small backpack, mini lightweight trail running backpack 10L
Zeroweight
naver.me
In 2010, we headed for Toubkal too
Back in 2010, just before my military enlistment, I put together a group of four in Korea and headed to Mount Toubkal in Morocco with friends.
This was not an era when you could check travel info in real time or lean on smartphone maps for everything. On top of that, we set out without a professional mountain guide.
We were young, fearless, and above all, full of that reckless confidence that says, “We’ll figure it out somehow.”
I was seriously jealous of the people going up with mules.
In the show, they had local guide Yassine with them for safety, plus mules to carry luggage or injured climbers if needed. It was a full-scale expedition, with a large filming crew, equipment, and an overnight stay at the refuge.
Our 2010 climb, on the other hand, was much simpler.
No fancy gear, no one managing the schedule—just us following the trail in front of us.
Along the way, we met a group of foreign hikers and ended up climbing with them. We struggled our way to what we thought was the summit, only to find out later that it wasn’t Toubkal’s summit at all.
Our goal was clearly Toubkal, but we ended up on a completely different peak.
Mount Toubkal Morocco: the summit wasn’t granted to either of us
|
Category |
Park Myung-soo’s Great Guide 3 team |
Our group in 2010 |
|
Goal |
Toubkal summit, 4,167m |
Toubkal summit, 4,167m |
|
Approach |
With a local professional guide |
Hiking without a professional guide |
|
Support |
Mules, filming crew, refuge stay |
Traveled light with friends |
|
Main variable |
Heavy snow, altitude sickness, avalanche risk |
Took the wrong route and climbed a different peak |
|
Result |
Stopped at the refuge around 3,150m |
Reached a nearby peak, not Toubkal |
|
What stayed with us |
Teamwork in bad weather and a safe retreat |
Atlas scenery, soccer, and hitchhiking |
The TV team had Toubkal right in front of them but couldn’t go higher because of the snowstorm. We weren’t blocked by weather, but we simply failed to find the right route.
Different reasons, same result: neither climb reached the summit of Toubkal.
So was it a failed climb?
I don’t think so.
In Great Guide 3, there’s a line that says it wasn’t exactly failure or success, but that sharing an experience like that together is meaningful in itself. Looking back on my climb 15 years later, that really hit home.
The Atlas Mountains were a work of art in themselves
When most people think of Morocco, they picture the Sahara Desert or the red alleyways of Marrakesh first. But once you head inland, a completely different side of Morocco opens up.
Massive mountain ridges, deep valleys, Berber villages built from earth and stone, and snow resting on the upper slopes all unfold in a single view. At first, it almost feels strange to see a snowy mountain landscape in dry North Africa.
The show captured that too. Every time the cast stopped staring at the ground and looked up through the exhaustion, another overwhelming view appeared. Meltwater rushed down like waterfalls, and above the tree line, rough rocky ridges stretched on and on.
I never made it to the exact summit of Toubkal either, but the face of the Atlas Mountains I saw that day has stayed with me ever since.
More than a summit photo, it was the landscape of the whole range that lasted.
What I first learned about altitude at 4,000 meters
The Toubkal hike was also my first real physical experience of being above 4,000 meters.
At high altitude, you can’t just power through the way you might at sea level. Walk a little too fast and suddenly you’re out of breath, with a headache or nausea creeping in. The show showed that clearly too, as Choi Daniel started experiencing altitude symptoms like chest pain, migraine-like headaches, and nausea after passing 3,000 meters.
In our group too, one person couldn’t make it all the way to the peak
and had to rest at a mid-mountain shelter.
Back then, it wasn’t that I fully understood the science of altitude acclimatization. I just walked slowly, at the pace my body would allow.
Later, when I worked in Bolivia at much higher elevations, I handled the altitude fairly well. One experience doesn’t give you permanent immunity to altitude sickness, of course, but I do think the breathing rhythm and pacing I learned on Toubkal helped make high places feel less unfamiliar.
At the time, I never imagined that what I learned on a mountain in Morocco would carry over to the highlands of South America a few years later.
Looking back, it really was a practice run.
The last part of the descent: hitchhiking
Which country in the world is the easiest for hitchhiking?
I’d honestly put Morocco in the top five, along with India. 🙂
On the way down, we even hitchhiked by catching a ride in a passing car.
If I were doing it today, I’d check safety and transportation options much more carefully. But back then, people and chance often filled in the gaps in our planning.
We climbed the wrong peak without a guide, played soccer with village kids, and rode back down in a stranger’s car.
Not much went according to plan, and maybe that’s exactly why the trip stayed with me so vividly.
Watching Park Myung-soo’s Toubkal climb brought my youth back to me
On the show, Park Myung-soo said that even though he was the oldest among both the cast and staff, what matters more than age is your will to live fully—and he showed that determination all the way up.
The summit push was called off because of worsening weather, but reaching the refuge at 3,150 meters in a snowstorm was still no small challenge. More importantly, holding back the desire to go higher and retreating under local control was exactly the kind of judgment that matters most in high mountains.
I was also the oldest in my group.
Though to be fair, we were only one to four years apart.
Watching the show, it was nice to see the scenery of Toubkal again—but more than that, it brought back the person I was in 2010.
The recklessness of heading into the mountains without a guide, the stubbornness of climbing to the end even on the wrong route, the freedom of casually hanging out with local kids and ending the day by hitchhiking.
The me of today would never climb that way again.
But I don’t want to deny that version of myself either.
Those mistakes made Morocco stay with me more deeply, and they became a small starting point for all the mountains and high-altitude places I would encounter later in other countries.
If you’re planning a trip to Morocco, keep Toubkal in mind
If Great Guide 3 sparked your interest in Morocco travel, don’t just focus on Marrakesh and the Sahara Desert—add the Atlas Mountains to your itinerary too.
You don’t have to reach the summit of Mount Toubkal Morocco. Staying in a village below the mountain, doing a short trek, or exploring valleys and Berber villages is enough to experience a side of Morocco that feels completely different from the desert.
What I would not recommend, though, is doing what I did in 2010 and setting off blindly without a professional guide. In high-altitude snowy mountains especially, current weather and local authority controls matter far more than anyone’s travel story.
Toubkal was not a mountain that granted its summit to everyone.
Park Myung-soo’s team was stopped by heavy snow, and we missed the summit because we took the wrong route. But both climbs came back with stories that lasted longer than the summit itself.
Sometimes travel shows you more when you don’t quite reach the destination. In 2010, I went looking for Toubkal and ended up on a different peak.
And there, I met the Atlas Mountains in a way I’ll never forget. I’d love to hear about my blog neighbors’ journeys too.
I got my Morocco travel information through the Naver Cafe Malhaba community. 🙂
<Lowest Morocco flight deals | MyRealTrip>
I keep sharing updates from my travels on YouTube too.
I’d love your support and interest.
Written by
Earth Village Field Mouse, a travel lifestyle blogger and YouTuber who loves books
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