My mountain weekend or How I didn't die

Part I

After my Russian classes on Friday, I spent the rest of the day searching Bishkek for the equipment I needed to take on Peak Uchityel (Uchityel translates to Teacher). The mountain is in the Ala Archa National Park, which is about an hours’ drive outside of the city. There is a short drive to the trailheads from the main entrance of park. The mountains loom on either side of trekkers who come to enjoy their weekends next to the valley streams.

There are a handful of shops in the city which sell gear for “Alpinizm.” I went to three different shops to get everything I needed. I bought a sleeping bag that can keep me from freezing up to negative 27 degrees Celsius, a set of “Palochki” (climbing poles), warm hiking socks, hiking pants and gloves. I packed up that night and set my bag aside. The next morning I woke up around 8 and had some cereal and coffee. My roommate Aaro came downstairs with his gear and we ordered a taxi.

We headed to the London School to meet up with some of our friends who were going with us to Ala Archa. We picked them up and started on our way to the mountains just outside of the city.

After we arrived, Aaro and I parted ways with our friends as we were taking a different path to the mountain hut where we would be camping for the night. The trip was about five hours, eight kilometers and a gain of about 1600 meters (5200 feet) in altitude. There was a distinct change in scenery the further we went up. At the bottom of the park there was a river running through a forest full of pines and long grass, towards the snow line there was mostly moss and dirt. When we got up to about 3300 meters (10800 feet) the ground was almost all rocks and snow.

By the time we reached the base camp, I was feeling slow and sluggish from the high altitude. There we met a Kyrgyz man named Telek, who lived there two weeks out of every month. His job was to tend to trekkers and rent out sleeping spaces. We carried our own tent to the camp so we set it up and laid our sleeping pads and sleeping bags inside. We boiled some pasta on our camping stove and threw a bouillon cube in to make soup. As night set in, the temperature dropped rapidly. As we started to clean up our dinner mess, Telek invited us inside the hut to have chai.

He told us that he hadn’t talked to anyone for over a week, other than a few porters who stopped in just long enough to drop off food and equipment. He started a fire and told us a little about Kyrgyz history. He told us that the Kyrgyz were originally in Russia but travelled south and later established themselves in and around the mountains of Central Asia. The room was lit by the firelight of the stove and the heat coming from it warmed our freezing fingers and toes as we drank the strong tea.

It was incredibly cold when we finally climbed into our sleeping bags and began sleeping. I had to wake up twice to relieve myself. Each time, I winced at the cold as I opened my sleeping bag and the freezing air snapped me into full consciousness. The wind pushed our tent around the entire night but Aaro and I were able to get a few winks in before our long trip to the top of Uchityel the next day.




Part II



We woke up around 7:30, put our clothes on in our sleeping bags, and began to cook some oatmeal. Although there were some sugar cubes melting into it, the porridge tasted like newspaper. We melted some snow and filled up our water bottles while we wolfed the food down. We took water, some snacks, and all of our warm weather gear and packed it into my rucksack to take with us to the summit.

I felt more comfortable with walking than I did the day before and I didn’t feel too bad after an hour of marching up the first steep incline of loose rocks. My strength, however, started to fade the further up we went. Since the camp was located at about 3300 meters (10800) feet, we had around 1300 meters (4260 feet) to the top of the peak. On top of beginning to feel slow and sluggish, my boots were failing me at every turn. I thought I had fantastic boots when I bought them, but they were more like skis and I was slipping left and right.

The higher we climbed, the more snow there was. I had to dig my climbing poles into the snow to get traction, but we continued to make progress. We took two small breaks to drink some warm tea from earlier and eat some nuts and dried fruit. I was tired during the first stop, exhausted at the second, and a zombie by the time we reached the summit.

The sky opened up and the wind calmed for a minute when we finally arrived at the top. The view was incredible. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. The sky was slightly cloudy but we could see Bishkek, miles away. Aaro reached out his hand and I shook it while he said “Congratulations!” This was his sixth time to reach the top of Uchityel, 4600 meters (15000 feet) above sea level.

We looked around for a few more moments and then started on our way down. Aaro was much lighter on his feet than I was, and my boots were giving me more trouble on the way down, so he managed to get quite far ahead of me.

As he dipped out of sight I continued to follow his footsteps. Most of the time they followed the path we had taken up but sometimes they meandered off through areas which were easier to step down. Usually, the easier areas were snowy which meant that I could hop down considerably faster. As I descended I came across an area where his footsteps veered off quite sharply to the right from the old path. I decided to take the newer path, which was thick with snow (or so I thought).

The new path curved to the right around a huge rock outcropping that was sided on the left by a small path and a short drop onto rocks, so I was happy to try the newer path which looked safer. Walking around the outcropping I noticed that the new path was on the edge of a snow face that was insanely high.

I wasn’t particularly worried when I started to walk in Aaro’s footsteps because he had made it without any problems. I’m not sure whether it was because I’m about 30 pounds heavier than him without a rucksack on, or because of my boots, or because I’m just not experienced enough to know how to walk properly in those conditions, but I slipped.

It wasn’t much at first, and it didn’t really seem like a problem, but I couldn’t stand back up without slipping. It was about two o’clock and the sun had been beating down on the snow face for several hours so the snow was soft and powdery, not icy and firm. There was ice, however, about three quarters of a foot under the snow. Suddenly, I was acutely aware that I was sitting on a 1000 meter (3200 foot) ice slide which was tilting downwards in front of me.

I began to worry.

I was to the middle left of the snow face so I was about 15 meters (50 feet) from the rocks that I needed to stand up and continue my downward trip. I started to push myself to the left using my poles, but every time I did I slid further down. The further I slid, the steeper the wall became. Later, Aaro would tell me that usually there is much more snow which makes it a lot easier to walk on without slipping.

I started digging my sticks in as deep as I could and pushing to the left. One of the water bottles we brought fell out of the side of my rucksack and tumbled down the slope until it eventually stuck into the snow somewhere and I couldn’t see it. I heaved myself to the left and slid about 20 feet further down until I jammed the stick between my legs so the weight of my body pushing on it stopped my downward movement.

I wanted to shout to Aaro, but I was afraid of any unnecessary movement. I considered taking off my rucksack and letting it tumble down the side of the mountain but getting it out from behind me would have caused me to lose my position and slide further. I continued to push to the left, this time using all my force to keep the sticks staked in. I inched slowly to the left and eventually hit a rock. I almost shouted with relief and continued to inch to the left. Eventually I reached a patch of rocks I could stand up on as Aaro was coming back up the mountain, calling my name. He had climbed back up a considerable distance to find me and I was incredibly relieved to see him. I didn’t look back at the snow wall until I was at the bottom. I almost lost my balance when I did.

We arrived back at our camp around sunset, packed up and decided to go home. On the way back down we managed to get lost in the dark, but we made it (A story for another time). Our roommate convinced a taxi driver to drive out of the city to pick us up at 11 o’clock at night. The lights of the city flickered by as we drove home.






Dedicated to Mills Bigham, 4/8/1986-10/19/2009, a best friend and brother.

What’s in the sack? There’s blood everywhere!

I have been here for almost two months and I am still surprised fairly often by all of the new things I have had a chance to participate in. I have been going to a sweet underground gym. Even here in Kyrgyzstan, Lil John and DMX are blared to motivate patrons. It’s hard not to be energized when you hear “HYEAH” and “HWAAAT” consecutively.

Today was Election Day here in Kyrgyzstan. The streets were fairly quiet and I hope that they remain that way. I have asked a lot of people what they think is going to happen when the results come in. Most people have told me that they really have no idea whether things here will be peaceful or not. Many people have told me that they don’t want to vote because “it will not change anything.” Many of them have said that people here will sell their seats to the highest bidder if they win. Many have said that, whatever party comes into power will do the same things and make the same mistakes as the last guy (Bakiyev). Time will tell, and this week will certainly be interesting.

Due to weather we were not able to make our climbing trip this weekend so I took full advantage of my down time on Sunday to sleep in. The night before had not been an incredibly late night but I was in need of a solid eight hour block of rest. Around 11 this morning, I woke up to someone knocking on the door. One of my roommates was already up, and he opened the door. Our friend Dave was standing there with a big white canvas bag wiggling in his hand, and a grin on his face.
(That is actually my roommate Aaro in the photo)

“I got two live turkeys for 600 Som each from the animal bazaar,” was his response to the look on my face. I had forgotten that Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving and we had decided to make turkey, from step one. He came in and placed the bag on the floor and the two turkeys kicked around a little bit. Although I have killed chickens before, killing a turkey was a new experience as they are quite feisty.

We were discussing how fast American Thanksgiving was approaching a few days ago, when the Canadian contingent of our group told us that their Thanksgiving was on Monday. Promises were made about the use of our kitchen and about helping prepare live turkeys. I made a mental note, but it apparently didn’t stick in my head.

As zero hour approached the cutlery was taken out, sharpened and inspected. We readied a bucket of hot water to soak the turkeys in after we were done, to help de-feather them. Dave and I pulled up our sleeves and slipped some rubber gloves on. We walked outside with a crew of six, carrying the bucket, the knives and the bag of Thanksgiving.

Dave untied the bag and pulled out the first one to go. He gently set it down and I firmly grabbed its head.

Our Kyrgyz neighbors watched and waved from the third floor as we were doing all of this.

Shortly thereafter, Ceci, our friend from Sardinia, decided she wanted to have a go. Dave pulled out the next one, I passed the knife and gloves to her, and she marvelously performed everything that I did not mention earlier.

After we bled them, we let them sit in the water for a minute or two and then started plucking the feathers out. In the backyard of our apartment complex it looked as though there had been a pillow fight that had gone terribly wrong. Once the feathers had been removed we dumped the water, collected the feathers for the trash, and went inside.

As we started to clean the turkeys we noticed something odd about their chests. When we opened them up, we found an incredible amount of seeds. Somehow the person who sold Dave the turkeys had managed to over feed them. We had been duped. Eventually they were all cleaned up and we set aside some of the organs to make gravy out of. Tomorrow, we are going to have an amazing Canadian Thanksgiving (Really just a dry run for the REAL ONE in November).






Pictures courtesy of Aaro Ylitalo

New Apartment, New Possibilities

The week started out well and ended even better.

Last Sunday I packed up all of my clothes and cleaned my room at my old apartment. I had been searching with three other friends to find a new apartment that was comfortable enough for the four of us. We eventually came upon one which had four bedrooms a large living room and two floors. For the states this may sound relatively easy, but in Bishkek it is quite a bit more complicated as most families live in one or two bedroom apartments. Once we signed the contract, we all moved our things into our new rooms.


It was quite easy to get comfortable in our new home and the freedom that comes with living away from the school campus is quite nice. With that newfound freedom I was even able to go on a date! The week went by quickly and on Saturday we were able to have an incredible “Novoselya” (housewarming) party. Despite a few broken glasses, the party was a success and quite a few people showed up to wish us well.


We are all bracing for the elections coming up. Most of the people I have talked to are expecting some sort of unrest but think it is unlikely to be anywhere near that of April 7th. There are several parties here vying for power. There seem to be three fairly popular groups out of the 29 or so that are running. According to the teachers and taxi drivers that I get the majority of my information from they are: Ata Meken, Ata Zhurt, and SDPK.

Although the elections are going to be happening, I am planning a trip to climb a mountain in the Ala Archa national park called Peak Uchityel which translates to “Teacher.” The mountain is known as a good place for novice mountaineers to get their feet wet.

I have also been learning to play guitar and can now proudly play about 2.5 songs half decently.