This page contains The Celelstial Tien Shan of Kyrgyzstan: Between Mountains and Sky which was published in the summer of 2006 in Hang Gliding and Paragliding Magazine.
The Celelstial Tien Shan of Kyrgyzstan: Between Mountains and Sky
Sometimes all the expletives: super, beautiful, spectacular, amazing... just fall short. A whirlwind month of making friends, finding roads up to launches, driving thousands of kilometers and gazing endlessly at snowy summits left us finally fulfilled. At the end of a four-month trip through China, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we felt we had found what we were searching for, deep in the central ranges of the Tian Shan Mountains.
At the beginning of August 2005 my wife Ursula and I picked up our passports in neighboring Almaty Kazakhstan, with new Kyrgyz visas stamped inside. We left the US three months earlier without paperwork because the consulate in Washington wouldn't issue visas during a small revolution back in March. (With clear suggestions of classic US involvement in other countries affairs, when the previous Kyrgyz president suggested closing the local US military base he was soon deposed in a revolution that included rioting and looting, leaving the country years behind economically).
Just a few hours north of Almaty, I flew the local Kazakh hill, Ush Kumur during a hang gliding competition. The stories proved true as I struggled through the infamous inversion with painfully slow climbs to cloud base. South toward Kyrgyzstan, icy mountain faces shimmed in the summer heat and called us into the hills and further adventures. We rented a tiny Russian 4x4 Niva and drove the few hours into the Chuay Valley, home to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capitol.
Stringing together connections and contacts, in Kazakhstan we hung out with Delta pilots we met at a Russian competition the month before. These hang pilots introduced us to two Bishkek paraglider pilots. Oleg spoke no English, so our first phone conversation was in Russian and short: "flying tomorrow?" "Yes". When and where were beyond my limited vocabulary so we found a helpful local to act as interpreter. After getting our directions he joined us in the taxi ride across town to make sure we found our way. We already felt welcome our first day in Bishkek, but were soon completely taken in by the small tight flying community. Local pilot, Vitaly, and his wife Irina wouldn't let us rent a hotel or camp outside the city, and instead put up with us as house guests whenever we came through town. Vitaly even lent us a mobile phone for retrieves and communication while we were in the country.
The first Kyrgyz site we visited was the local "training" hill, called two Hundred Meters where climbs to cloud base are normal on good days. Thousand Meters is a higher launch in the hills behind this, where of course there is less chance of sinking out. As the locals explained, "With sites this good at home, you see why we haven't traveled very much to fly." Indeed, most of the country consists of high mountains, with ninety-four percent mountainous and forty percent over three thousand meters, (almost ten thousand feet), the potential for soaring the fascinating topography is endless.
We left on our first tour in the country and drove three hours west, then over a high pass and into the Suusamyr Valley. We joined two locals and a young local American Expat, John Atwood and New Zealander, Ken Jackson for this mission. They already had some great cross country flights here and "researched" the retrieve potential when they discovered which bridges were out and how far the road went. A week earlier they spent a night out and a second day walking back so we had a better idea how far to fly and which side of the river to stay on.
We camped next to a clear stream below a ridge soaring site. In a roadside café we found the best manty (steamed dumplings called buuz in Mongolia and Russia) and bought liter bottles of kumys (the fermented mares milk I grew to love in Mongolia earlier in the trip).
After some mixed weather and overdevelopment I understood why I'd been told "be ready to fly when an opportunity comes and don't give up just because it's raining and snowing". This proved true the whole trip through Kyrgyzstan, with everyday flyable at some point, but usually some rain and snow both before and after the "flyable window". The weather alone makes this a serious paragliding destination. This may explain why so many local pilots have crashed with serious injuries; that and the checkered history of instruction and the local perspective of paragliding as an extreme sport (where helmets were considered uncool and reserves unneeded).
Ken and I caught one of those "windows of opportunity" after sitting for an hour in rain, grapple and hail. I climbed to base first and decided to fly away from the snowstorms hammering the mountains. Hopping from cloud to cloud, I crossed the twenty-kilometer wide Suusamyr Valley. Ken, a fearless police officer from Auckland decided the lift would be better along the squall line and flew the standard cross country route along the jagged snowy peaks. I turned back and followed since he was directing the retrieve; besides the canyon I had crossed to wound into high peaks hiding both river and road.
After chasing Ken through a snowstorm we landed close to each other just short of sixty kilometers, near the first broken down bridge. Spirits were high as we packed into the Niva thankful that Ursula and John had found us.
Though tempted to spend more time flying the Suusamyr Valley, the object of our journey was exploration. (Actually I had first agreed to accompany a British paragliding tour to the Tian Shan to produce a video of their tour. After the March revolution the trip was canceled, and we decided to include it in our summer travels anyway. After discovering Mongolia too challenging for a paragliding tour destination, we realized that Kyrgyzstan offered the adventure and potential we were looking for. I have since purchased the domain name paraglidekyrgyzstan.com in hopes of offering tours here in the future).
So, with zero site information, we drove deep into Kyrgyzstan. There we found high peaks, steep switchback roads, grassy launches and perfect flying conditions. We completed several loops through the Sary Kamysh, Kyrgz Alatau and Kara Katta Ranges visiting small towns, lakes and high passes, sometimes being turned back by closed roads and many full days of driving.
Our exhaustion from driving and the stinky gas fumes the Niva spewed on the steep bumpy roads, combined to poison us both. We took a much needed break in Bishkek where we repaired the rental car and wandered huge open bazaars that compare to any in the world for their color, intensity and danger. We filled ourselves with our favorite local foods, shashlyk, or shish kabobs and the wonderful crusty bread, known all over Asia as nan. We scored another set of Kazakh visas for our return trip to Almaty, then left for the tourist destination of Issyk-Kul.
The hundred seventy kilometer long Issyk-Kul Lake is surrounded on all sides by glaciated mountains. The biggest city along the lake is historic Karakol. The ranges above the lake are affected by the moderating effect of the large body of water and are therefore even wetter. Cumulous clouds usually formed in long lines above the peaks by mid-morning. Again we found a complex and varied weather pattern that seemed to cycle between clear sunny skies to dark rain clouds every four hours. This meant the darkest wettest morning might turn beautiful by noon. It also meant don't wait to launch until it's raining.
We explored some potential sites in the nearby Terskey Alatau Range and again decided that horses generally work better than four by fours in the mountains. We visited the national park outside of Karakol and camped on top of the local ski hill. This site has everything: a road up, a convergence ridge with abundant thermals and a hefty park entrance fee. I got off the hill and found lots of lift, but was forced to land by threatening weather. Again, the weather proved changeable as rain started before my wing was even folded .
The ski hill is the established soaring site above Karakol, but the potential for more discoveries pushed us on to further explorations. We maxed out the four-wheel drive capabilities of our Niva, turning back for the first time on the trip, when the road turned into a boulder field. We also discovered a magical land of high-glaciated peaks in the nearby Central Tian Shan.
These mountains border China to the east and Kazakhstan to the north. Before we left home we arranged border permits to visit these restricted areas. This area is considered safe for tourism, but the border with Tajikistan to the south is infamously dangerous. This is where several years ago, American climbers Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden were taken hostage by Islamic separatists (then escaped by pushing their guards off a cliff). This region is still considered off limits by the US Consulate as well as most foreign visitors.
We lost a day waiting for a truck to get pulled out of a rockslide that blocked the road. Still higher in the mountains we arranged horses up a side valley that took us to a pass five thousand feet above the main valley. My journal entry from August 29 th gives a sense of my excitement: "Amazing flight from the pass... 4,750 feet of relief and lift everywhere, huge birds and all around a hundred truly classic alpine peaks- each with its own glacier and steep ice face. The most spectacular flight I've ever had..."
Again the weather gods smiled on us just long enough to squeeze a flight in. I flew above peaks and glaciers out of a fantasy, fairly tale land. This was truly the Shangri La of high mountains and paragliding that fulfilled our quest of the last four months. We had traveled across Mongolia, through Russia and Kazakhstan; searched the length of the Andes, the Himalayas of Nepal and India and the Sierras and Rockies of home. Finally I discovered the most spectacular, scenic and adventurous paragliding, here in the heart of the Tian Shan Mountains.
The next day we searched for road access to a launch that "serviced" the same high peaks. We found our road, but this time the weather didn't cooperate. I launched in a snowstorm and found no lift on the four thousand foot descent.
Ecstatic with our heady accomplishment, we left the mountains, crossing high snow covered passes in a driving blizzard. The same afternoon, back in Karakol the skies cleared. Ursula proved her endurance once again as we explored new roads and high passes to the north. I took a short flight over looking the lake and pondered where another hour hike or horse ride could take my glider and me. The cloud street over the range looked as continuous and well formed as ever. It was painful to leave this flying paradise.
With our Beijing departure approaching and the desire to get another glimpse of China, we headed back to friends in Bishkek. We'd completed several huge loops through Kyrgyzstan, and pioneered several sites; flown cross-country at others and discovered through the people we met the true solid heart of the country. Everywhere we went people talked with us, not worried by the language barrier, opened their homes and welcomed us into their lives.
This was the end of a four-month trip through Central Asia. We found several of the most spectacular flying areas I've yet encountered and some of the friendliest people. The trip ended with a day soaring over the Great Wall near Beijing after forty-nine days of flying and sixty hours in the air, more sites than I can count and of course a lifetime of memories. (Not to mention the fifteen gigabits of digital photos we took).
Go to Forty Days Over Mongolia, A Paragliding Expedition to the Lands of Ghengis Khan.
Go to Dateline Kurai, Altay Republic: The Russian Paragliding Championships.
Go to Paragliding In The Callejon De Huaylas.
Go to Paragliding Huaraz Peru.
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