Monkey Fingers: the rock formation in the Dades Valley

The formation known locally as "Monkey Fingers" (doigts de singe in the French still commonly used for it) sits along the Dades valley road near Boumalne Dades. It's a cluster of narrow, rounded rock pillars eroded out of the same red rock that forms the nearby gorges, said to resemble a row of fingers or knuckles depending on the angle you catch them from.

The shapes come from the same erosion processes that carved the Todra and Dades gorges nearby: softer rock layers wearing away faster than harder ones, over a long enough timescale to leave these more isolated, rounded columns standing apart from the main cliff faces.

It's a roadside stop, not a destination in its own right. Most routes through the Dades valley, between the High Atlas and the Sahara, pass close enough for a short photo stop without adding real time to the day. Combined with the valley's switchback road nearby, it's one of the more overlooked short stops on the classic mountains-to-desert route.