The globe-trotting Sheffield-based couple, Sarah and Tony Whitehouse, joined a German team for a hard new route in Morocco's Taghia region, an increasingly popular 'Mecca' for big wall free climbing.

The full team, which comprised Michel Bansch, Ruediger Helling, Erhardt Klinguer, Peter and Tino Kohbach, Dieter Rulker, the Whitehouses and Tobias Wolf, concentrated on Oujdad, a 2,685m summit that dominates the small mountain village of Taghia, a remote Berber habitation at around 2,000m in the eastern sector of the High Atlas. The North and South walls of Oujdad present c600m-high faces of often sharp, skin-destroying limestone and are the home to a number of demanding routes.

The South West Face is a shorter wall left of the big offerings, Baraka (16 pitches: 7b, 6b obl) and Barracuda (16 pitches: 7c+, 7a obl). Approximately mid-way between the two established routes on this wall, Ramadin (eight pitches to A3 and 6a) and Shucram (12 short pitches to 7c, 7a obl), and about 300m left of the latter, lies a prominent water-worn furrow ending some distance above the ground.

The new Anglo-German route, A Little Less Conversation, named after the old Elvis song, is a line based on the left arête of this furrow. It has eight sustained pitches, all but the third and last being 6c or above, and the crux fifth pitch 7c+. In common with most routes at Taghia, the limestone proved more or less devoid of natural gear placements and 45 bolts were drilled for protection, making for obligatory moves of 7a. Fixed ropes were used while working the route and, needless to say, the considerable talents of Helling and Wolf were brought into play for the eventual redpoint ascent.

Although 'quietly' explored by a few French and Spanish alpinists since the early '70s, it was more or less only at the start of this decade that long hard free routes began to be established in 'modern style'. And there is now a climbing guide to the area: Taghia, Montagnes Berbères, written by regular French visitor Christian Ravier. This 256-page publication, full of topos and photodiagrams of the climbing in Taghia, was published in 2008 at around 20 Euros.

The Whitehouses, who regularly climb with the Germans on the sandstone towers of the Dresden region, have joined them for two foreign trips in the last couple of years. In the summer of 2006 they were part of a team making the first ascent of Russian Disko (10 pitches: 7a, 6c obl) on the Pamir Pyramid in the famous Ak-su Valley of Kyrghyzstan, while in early 2007 they supported another German team, including Helling, on the first ascent of Wassermusik (18 pitches: 7c with a short section of A1) on Cerro Trinidad, possibly the most demanding big wall free climb in Chile's Cochamo Valley.

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