Morocco
Dec 14–21, 2026 · 7 days
Dec 14–21, 2026
7 days
Up to 14 participants
Trail Running
The challenge
The last village drops behind you. It won't come back for four days. Ahead lies stone, gravel, and the long edge of the Sahara. You run into it.
This is seven days of trail running in Morocco with Dioni Gorla. Dioni is an Austrian trail runner who races on alpine and ultra terrain across Central Europe. She knows hard ground and long miles, and out here you'll need both.
You'll start in Marrakech and cross the Atlas Mountains, climbing over 2,200m at the Tichka pass. Then you drop south, down the Draa Valley, past palm oases, to the desert frontier. Your first run is a short 10km taste of the sand. After that, the real work starts.
Stage one is about 25km on stone and earth flats. Then 16.5km through low dunes and dried river beds. Then 21km toward the great Erg Chigaga, past an old lake bed and the Erg Nsofa dunes. It is hard. The heat is real. The days are long. You'll sleep in mobile wild camps, six to a tent, with a camp team and a chef cooking under the stars.
You'll join a team that bakes sand-bread over the fire one night. You'll wash with flannel water on trail. If you stay for the extended days, you'll hike up the tallest dune at dusk and hear live desert blues drift across camp.
At sunset the dunes turn gold and soft. You stand at the top, tired legs, big sky, and the whole desert goes quiet.
The hard bit
It's meant to be hard.
This isn't a holiday. You'll be cold, tired, and a long way past your comfort zone. That's the deal, not the warning. The hard bit is the whole reason the rest of it means anything.
The team
You don't do it alone.
You go with a small group who signed up for the same mad idea. You meet them before you leave. You suffer with them out there. You come home with them as friends.
Dioni Gorla
You're with Dioni, properly.
Not a meet-and-greet. Not a photo at the finish. Dioni is on the trip with you, every single day. Same trail, same camp, same fire. You get to know the person, not the name.
Who leads
Dioni Gorla
More from Dioni →Booking conditions
Full refund if Loaf cancels the trip. If you cancel, see our booking conditions.
Read booking conditions →How joining a team works
Here's what actually happens.
You apply. Not everyone gets a spot, so tell us why you want to come. We read every word.
If you're in, you're on the team. That's the bit people don't expect. This isn't a tour where you turn up on day one with a clipboard and a coach full of strangers. Weeks before we go, you meet everyone. We get the whole team on a call. You see the faces, learn the names, hear why each person signed up. By the time you land, these aren't strangers. They're your team.
Then you go and do something hard, together. Dionileads. You climb, you carry, you keep going. Some of it hurts. That's the point. Shared adversity is the fastest way to know people properly, and you come home with a group of friends you'd never have found any other way.
You don't need to be a pro. You just need to be up for it.
Apply for a place
You apply for a place; you don't buy one. We read every form. The wrong person on a mountain ruins it for everyone.
Hear more from Dioni
New trips, notes from the trail, and hard things worth doing — from Dioni, not from a marketing team.
Every trip on this page is run by Loaf: small groups, every plan handled before you arrive. Dioni leads. You bring the will.
How Loaf works →