Atlas Mountain Race 2026

So here I am, standing in the middle of Morocco on a Friday afternoon in early February, heart beating somewhere between anticipation and disbelief. In just five minutes, when my Garmin ticks over to 17:00, it will finally begin: the biggest sporting adventure of my life.

The Atlas Mountain Race 2026 lies ahead. What is it? It’s 1,400 kilometers and 25,000 meters of climbing across one of the most unforgiving landscapes on the planet. It’s not a race, we have signed up for the adventure of a lifetime.

And then, just before the start, the sky darkens. A deep black cloud, moving faster than it should, rolls toward us. I use the word "us", because I was not riding solo, but in a pair with Raphael Schröder. This was fortunate, as it soon turned out to be the most dangerous and trickiest race I have ever done. The deep black cloud swallows the last light of the day and settles overhead of us. An omen, perhaps, that this race won’t ease us in gently.

An icy start

The storm we had been following nervously on the radar app arrived exactly on time. No hesitation, no warning, just rain. Heavy, persistent, unavoidable. We rolled out fully wrapped in our rain gear, straight into the storm.

The road tilts upward immediately, and for hours it doesn’t let up. Rain seeps into everything. The gloves we almost packed but decided to leave behind suddenly feels like the one mistake that matters. At 3°C, with wet hands wrapped around cold handlebars, comfort becomes irrelevant. You just keep moving.

The plan had been ambitious but clear: ride through the first night and reach checkpoint one at kilometer 360 in a single push. But the mountains have their own terms. Rain turns to cold, cold turns to ice, and the roads become unpredictable.

Eventually, reason wins. We stop. Four hours of sleep in a small roadside hotel, just enough to reset, not enough to feel rested.

By morning, the rain is gone, but the cold remains. We climb higher, toward the highest point of the entire route. At 2,400 meters above sea level, the road is locked under a sheet of solid ice. Every movement becomes deliberate. Every mistake has a consequence.

Somewhere along the way, our winter training from back home started to make sense. We needed to cycle on iced roads in order to cross the mountain chain ahead of us: we are now in the Haut-Atlas area, perhaps the highest point of the race. On a downhill section, my front wheel slid out from underneath me where the surface was too icy, and I came down hard on the ground. No time to rest – I stood up quickly, picked up my bike and continued riding.

And then, just as suddenly, everything changed. The sun rose over the High Atlas, stretching warming light across an endless expanse of ridge lines and valleys. The cold thankfully faded, and the ice and discomfort became a distant memory. What remained was the scale of it all – raw, vast, and almost unreal.

Into the desert

It was 8:07 in the morning according to my Garmin. And we had only made it into the first complete remote section. CP 1 was check-marked, and we started first downhill in the night with only stars above our heads.

Now we only had 100 km to reach Afra. Afra is a city nobody knows except everyone who planned an Excel sheet to plan an overview all the small towns in the desert where you can find water and food. It was there we found out that 100 km in the desert isn't the same 100 on the road bike: it's almost a whole day in the saddle. Until then, there was no resupply, no villages, no safety net.

This remote section could be best described as a rocky desert, stretching in every direction. It feels endless and prehistoric. It sounds funny, but I felt like an ancient dinosaur living in a wild open world with nothing but just the world and me.

The trail threads through this landscape it like a mere suggestion rather than a defined path. Gentle climbs bleed into fast, flowing descents. The rhythm is almost hypnotic. Kilometer by kilometer, we disappeared deeper into the landscape.

And this is where Morocco reveals its true character. It's not in the towns or along the roads, but out here in the vast, empty spaces where scale becomes hard to comprehend.

It’s a kind of beauty that doesn’t ask for attention, yet commands it completely. A place so expansive, so detached from anything familiar that for a moment, you forget the world you came from even exists.

The bitter wind

Not only did the Unknown Race face strong winds, but this year's Atlas Mountain Race became the hardest edition of its 7 year history. Morocco had not seen such a hard winter since 12 years, and with that came extreme weather. We were victims of these conditions.

Ironically, we were saved from several life threatening situations simply because of wind gusts which didn't even let us push our bikes. It was unbelievably scary. We jumped off the bikes when the first storm hit us, but I couldn’t even hold my bike anymore so we stopped at a closed hotel where some locals had helped us to find some shelter inside.

Cold showers only

In the hotel I suddenly remembered that I hadn't had a shower in the last 50 hours – time had just simply flown by. I felt so uncomfortable, so I decided to go for the only option available, an ice cold shower. The room also happened to be also ice cold, because there was no heating during this unexpected storm. Normally, Morocco's Atlas area is as cold as an Austrian winter night. It was 5 degrees in the hotel room, and the shower was 8 degrees.

I had stopped questioning things, I was just humbled about how lucky I was that his was not my daily life. But here was the crux – I had decided to be here and as soon as the race would be over, I could go back to my luxury life back in Europe. I felt so privileged to have this choice but at the same time so enriched to get to know different worlds that also exist – maybe this is exactly what we are looking for in our humble humanity. Opening your eyes, overcoming challenges, and cherishing what you have while being kind and helpful to all people around you.

At that moment I was suffering, but I was also growing day by day through the varied challenges. This was one of the reasons why we were there, living in the moment. This is my "why" – the driver for me to get up again after such two days of hard effort on the bike in brutal conditions. Our alarm rang after 4 hours, and we were back on our bikes after another hour. Our breakfast was two oranges and some cookies we found in our pockets. The wind had finally settled, so now we could climb over the mountain that last night would've been too windy to cross safely. The locals were certainly right – during the day you can cross it easier. It wasn't to be underestimated thought – there were still strong winds, and good bike skills were needed to handle this.

We crossed the mountain and continued along our route.

The final day and the scratch

After struggling for so long, our bodies were way more battered than we had thought. We stopped and rested at CP 2, after about 700 kilometers of riding. Unfortunately, Raphi had become sick by then. The idea of us scratching had occurred to us before, but now it was clear we had to stop here and not risk our health just to cross the finish line. We had been the fastest pair until that point, and we felt very humble knowing the excitement of our friends and followers along the way.

Taking a decision to scratch a race is never easy. Nevertheless, it's still a success to keep firm and to listen to your own words said long before the race: there is no priority above our health – we will always choose safety first. And so we did.

My body was empty. If Raphi had not woken up with fever and a sore throat, I would probably have struggled with thoughts of giving up simply because I hit my physical limit. On reflection, I had probably over-paced myself and worn myself out due to riding too fast for too long. But that’s also my style: I like to find a flow and ride fast. So for my next ultra, I will do it exactly the same way again. Ride fast, rest hard!

I believe you can enjoy ultra and don’t need to suffer on the unnecessary stuff. After all, nobody forces you to cut down your sleep, so don’t do it. You may not win the race, but I wouldn't be proud to have won a race simply because I was the one who slept the least. I am okay being at the back of the race, as long as I stayed healthy and happy within my own limits. And that is absolutely ok. This is not my style of racing and winning.

In any case, for me winning is defined in so many other trophies. The best one for example is the rich memories that nobody can take away from me, and I will tell my grandchildren about it. One of my favourite memories was the 100km remote section. There, I felt so exposed, so lost in nature and the Moroccan wildlife, alone with my bike and simply humble to be there. You can't reach it by car or public transport, and probably only those who try a bikepacking adventure will ever see it. I saw it with my own eyes, and my own legs took me there.

Jaqueline Lischka