How to get there:
This mountain is west of Alger. A very nice 6 lane highway
runs east-west and provides good access to the local area.
Drive west to Miliana, turn north here.
Continue uphill, north-east towards location N36.32556, E002.26761.
When we visited, a military check-point was located here and a permit
was required in order to proceed.
The road continues uphill to location N36.34795, E002.25912, elevation near 800 meter.
Turn left here and continue to the ruins of an old hospital. This road is rough,
high clearance may be needed. It actually continues north of the summit, then curves
back and climbs the hill from the west.
A 4WD car may, if permitted to do so, drive
all the way to the summit.
Route description:
From parking, anywhere between the road fork and the summit, just continue along the road.
When north of the peak, a short-cut
ascending the north slope more directly, is possible.
Either way, you will soon reach a fairly large summit area
with a summit sign at the far end.
Comments:
Breakfast at 0800, we had an agreed pickup at 0830. Our driver was
certainly on time, however, due to no available parking near the hotel,
he parked slightly illegally
and promptly had his front wheel clamped.
Flagging down a police car, the problem was resolved with more discussions
and hand waving. Not easy to understand all the argumentation, but my
guess it mostly concerned the cost of this violation.
Should the fact that he was serving foreign tourists qualify for special
treatment?
All in all, a fairly minor delay.
We drove west, then north in the town of Miliana. Very congested traffic there
causing us some delays. Two guides had been contacted in advance, we met
without any trouble. However, the police and military "teamed up" to make
the buraucracy of this ascent more time consuming than any other peak
we visited. We first made the mandatory local police visit, then proceeded to
a military check point near location N36.32556, E002.26761. They demanded copies
of passports, so we returned to town and got photo-copies. On our second
visit to the same check-point, our photo-copies were still not acceptable and we were
no directed to visit another police station neaar location
N36.33431, E002.30114. This visit took a long time, but finally, it was decided that
we should be escorted to and from the summit
by 2 police (jeep type) cars.
From now on everything went reasonably well. They guided us along a dirt road that
was extremely borderline for our (NO-4WD) car.
Eventually, our car got stuck in some
slippery mud, but this was pretty close to the summit.
Thus, we walked
the short final stretch, while the 2 police vehicles drove all the way
to the summit.
We spent about 30 minutes on top,
before starting the return hike. When getting back down
to the paved road, I expected our police friends to leave us. Wrong, one police car
should escort us all the way down to the big 6 lane east-west freeway.
This was actually a bit fun as the police car would use its blue light as
well as its siren to get through traffic in traffic circles and elsewhere if
traffic clogged up. See video from this experiecnce below.
