This summer/fall we managed four hikes in the Tian Shan mountains. This was the second one and by far the most strenuous. We were thinking of making it back to the mountains before they become completely snowed in, but we may be too late, as the mountains are looking pretty snowy from here and there's been snow on the ground in the city for the last ten days. In the summer, the mountains looked distant and were hard to see due to the leafy foliage of the city. Now, the leaves of the city trees are gone and the mountains are coated in snow- they seem to be three or four times closer and hover over the city.
This second hike was also in Ala Archa National Park, but we took a different trail. Together with a few friends, we hired a van and met in front of school. The street in front of our school, called Abdymomunov, has hosted some pretty strange events during the year. That Sunday, the day of this hike, was maybe the oddest...go-kart races!
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Once we were all gathered and finished watching children race at high speed - one of the spectators told us that the karts go up to 170 km/hour - we piled in the van and bumped and bounced our way along the 30km/45 minute trip to the park. The park is due south of the city and is an actual park - you pay an entrance fee at the gate and they, presumably, maintain the park. The entrance fee for the car and nine of us was 900 soms or about $18. After the gate, you continue another 5km or so in the car. We passed by the trail we hiked before and came to end of the paved road by a weird hotel called the Alplager or something equally strange. It's pictured later. Then it was up and into the Celestial mountains.
It was a sunny warm day and we climbed up above the valley floor. We were both a little further into the park when we started than we were during the last hike and on a different mountain altogether. This valley was on our left during the Alpinist Graveyard Hike, on this hike, a.k.a. the hike of the Lost Waterfall, the valley was on our right. Also, notice the effect of a single airplane;s con trail on the crystal clear sky.
The valley split and we took the left fork, climbing above a tumbling mountain stream.
We took a brief rest to admire the view. Valery and Michelle found separate rocks to admire the world from.
Valery served as our guide on three of our hikes and is an amazing alpinist. I think he draws strength from being in the mountains and, although he was the oldest among us, put us all to shame with his energy on these hikes.
We continued along our valley, heading towards the black stain on the far end of the valley - you can barely see it in this photo. It is a waterfall and was our ultimate target, although we were unsure if there was currently any water in it. It's a glacial melt waterfall, and although the weather was still warm, it was not hot, so the glacial melt had slowed considerably. It was one of those days where a you're warm in at-shirt in the sun, and cool in the shade with a light jacket on. There was little shade on this hike though.
Always stopping to see the wildflowers along the way
And we climbed and hiked and climbed. This was about an 8-10 hour hike...
About half way to our destination, we had to cross a rock slide
As the photographer, pictures of me are rare. Here I am sneering at the little mountain stream that ran thru the rock slide. "You call that burbling?" I was heard to say. And yes, the water was pure, freezing cold and drinkable.
Looking back, I swear the trail looked wider when we were on it...
Looking forward, that tiny ribbon of trail on the left didn't look too promising. But we were in it to win it. Also, now do you see the black patch on the rocks in the distance? Waterfall?
We found a nice shady spot to have lunch and feasted. Nothing tastes quite like food in the mountains. By this point, we had probably gone from Bishkek's 800m altitude to about 2,500m. And actually, we always brought peanut butter and jelly. It was pretty lackluster and everyone else brought nicer stuff, I think Valery had Kabuli raisins and Angie had something delicious and home made...good thing they shared with us! Poor Karol, we made her a sandwich...
After lunch, I had a chance to go to the river we had been hiking above. It wasn't very big, but it was super cold and super swift. I complimented it on its cascad-iness. And you can see from the rock debris level on these photos, just how high this gets in flood...
We mysteriously discovered some goat horns? Maybe? Marco Polo Sheep?
Mike, Michelle and I decided to go take a look for the waterfall, even though we were sure it was dry.
We started up the hill above our lunch spot. Mike and Michelle leaping like gazelles up the stony path and myself, lumbering up, an out of breath elephant.
Here the altitude was really bothering me. Each step set my heart pounding and thudding in my chest. I'm not a fast runner, but I've played a lot of sports, run 10Ks and exercised a lot in my life...my heart never beat that fast or that hard. Each step convinced me that it would explode. Months later, writing this I can still remember that feeling - I can still hear it in my ears thudding, pounding. I had to stop every 10 steps or so. Which is fine, since I got to snap pictures for me to show you.
And I saw some kind of eagle. Or maybe it was the angel of death, waiting for my heart to explode. It's right in the center of the shot.
There was no clear way to the waterfall and after a brief conference we gave up on the idea and decided to follow the path we were on. And this path went up and up and Mike and Michelle went up and up and I sat down a lot. I feel that these pictures don't do the altitude, steepness and sheer above-ness of this path justice. Going up was nearly like climbing a staircase or ladder. I reached a certain point and I was finished. Overcome. It reminded me of a scene in
Dharma Bums by Jack Keroauc. There's a moment in the book, when the narrator, Smith is climbing a mountain and he's just about to the top. He's suddenly overwhelmed by the experience and can't move up or down. It's such an honest scene that it must have actually happened.
Keroauc wrote
""This is too high!" I yelled to Japhy in a panic...I
nudged myself closer into the ledge and closed my eyes and thought "Oh
what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh
laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty
space," and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, "When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing."
The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on
Alvah's straw mats. Now it was enough to make my heart pound and my heart bleed
for being born at all."
Well, that's about what I felt. There was more to it, something like a feeling that nothing could HOLD me down onto the mountain. Not that I would fall, which was certainly possible, but that I would FLOAT right off the mountain into the vastness of blue sky. Up, not down. It was a moment that made me feel both absolutely tiny in relation to all but abnormally large and clumsy and foolish. And it looked like this.
I stared into the face of God and flinched. And then climbed down and said "Stop looking at me God!" On the way down I passed a backpacker in flip flops with about 100 pounds on his back. He didn't come back down the hill, so I'm assuming he floated away.
Mike and Michelle made it to the plateau and said it was nice. I think they were trying to protect me and that there was a taco stand up there, because honestly, that's what heaven would look like to me.
And then it was the path home. Slow, plodding. Singing songs to my son strapped in an Ergo carrier to my back. Plodding. But you can't beat the vista.
I think I have over 700 photos from this hike alone. It's hard not to post them all. It's hard to write about it in a way that expresses the joy of the mountains here. It feels almost blasphemous to try.
We got to back to where we started and said hey to the yurts.
And the weird hotel thing.
We walked a little bit more and saw some more prayer trees.
Spent some chillaxed times by an alpine glacial melt river. Valery and my son jumped about like frogs. It was hard to tell which had more energy.
And looked back to where we had been, what we had done.
And to top off a perfect day, Angie found some raspberries growing wild and shared them with us.
Goodbye Ala Archa. We'll miss you.