Mounina Bero, 17 years old, eyes the void beneath her feet, then remains motionless on a rocky ledge of Ben Amira, twenty meters above the ground, stubbornly refusing for long minutes to abseil down. Her elder sister, Kallat, encourages her from below, having taken up climbing two years ago, not without first overcoming the reluctance of the people in her village – after all, no one here had ever seen a woman do such a thing! Since then, the young girl dreams of becoming a tour guide specializing in rock climbing.
Paths Toward the Future
It is a group of French climbers, led by Jean-Louis Lauféron, an osteopath and mountaineer, who have been opening routes on the stone sentinels of Mauritania for six years. “When we first came here, these monoliths were not only pristine but utterly unknown: on the Internet, it was as if they did not exist!”, recalls this energetic man, cofounder in 2005 of the association Medicine and Mountains of the World, whose mission is to blend a passion for summits with the development of African villages – for instance by funding French lessons for Kallat to help her pursue her dream. Even camels die of thirst, See the Crack, The Law of the Desert or The Origin of the World – a tribute to this gigantic fault, on the west face of Aïcha, which inevitably calls to mind Gustave Courbet’s notorious painting: 27 climbing routes with evocative names have been established in the area. And the adventure continues…
➤ Article published in GEO HS magazine No. 134, “Great Escapes at Slow Speeds,” August-September 2026.
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