Michlifen ski resort

Michlifen is a modest outdoor ski area set in a crater-like bowl amid the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, close to the tidy hill town of Ifrane, often nicknamed the Switzerland of Morocco. It is a genuine mountain slope but a small one, with drag lifts serving mostly beginner and intermediate runs, and it appeals as much for the novelty and the scenery as for the skiing itself. The North-African winter is short and highly variable, so cover can be thin or absent in poor years and best in a cold, snowy spell. There is a well-known luxury hotel of the same name in nearby Ifrane, distinct from the ski slope itself. Most visitors combine a day on the snow with the region's forests and towns.