Ala Archa National Park, Kyrgyzstan, April 18, 2018

 

I made it back from the Ratsek Glacier by 5:00 pm. I started out this morning at 8:15. It was the most extreme snow hike I’ve ever done, and I can’t believe my cheap boots and wool socks kept my feet warm in knee deep snow.

 

I don’t get surprised that often anymore, but after getting settled in my room last night at the Ala Archa Hotel, I went outside to find that they have a golden eagle that they use for hunting. One minute I was stepping out into the snow, the next I was face to face with a giant eagle. Kyrgyzstan.

 

I saw magpies on the way up this morning, and for a moment there was blue sky up Ala Archa Valley. Walking through the snow, I heard birds calling, but didn’t see them. They sounded like big raptors, I don’t know if they were eagles or what. The first part of the hike was straightforward, past where I saw the mountain goats yesterday, through a forest and up to a place called the broken heart, a giant boulder sheared in two, dropped there by a glacier. For some reason when I stood at the broken heart I was hit by a broadside of emotion, I was so thankful to be there, but suddenly missed everyone I lost all at once, all my family and friends. I couldn’t explain it. There was something so sad about that rock cracked in two, sitting at the edge of a grassy field covered in snow, that brought everyone I loved who’d died to the front of my mind. My eyes teared up and I swore at myself and turned to trudge on. The broken heart was the perfect name for that spot.

 

Later, I crossed a stream, easy because it was frozen solid, and made it three quarters of the way to the glacier before it started getting challenging.

 

A few times I found tracks in the snow, some tiny, some half as big as my hand. The edges were blurred enough that I had no idea what animal had left them.

 

It never stopped snowing on the way up. It started as spitting snow, just a few flurries, then wet flakes in earnest, then hard flakes about half the size of a grain of rice, and finally it was like they were forming around me in the cloud, only to stick to my backpack and my coat. In a second forest, this one of small birches, I started sliding backwards whenever I didn’t get a good footing. It was hard to tell what was under the snow until I put some weight on it, so sometimes I slid backwards and a few times I even fell into the soft powder. Out of the woods the terrain flattened out, and not long after that I came to a snowfield going up at a little less than 45 degrees. I was worried I was going to start sliding down and not be able to stop. At two places there were drop offs not far from my path, and at one there had been a landslide that had taken most of the trail, but still left enough mangled path to pass through. 

 

About halfway up I realized that if it weren’t for the tracks of the last person, I would never have known where to go. I started calling them “the intrepid explorer” in my head, and thanked them for blazing the trail. I wondered if I would see them at the glacier.

 

Soon I was in the clouds, and I couldn’t see very far. Even further on, the cloud got so thick I could only see the mountain around me, but it was bright and I had a hard time following the tracks. I hadn’t brought sunglasses on this trip, or gloves. My hands were frozen and I couldn’t see very well because except for some dark rocks in the distance, all around me was a dazzling white, the sky, the ground, the snow, the mist. I had put on local sunscreen when I left, and it looked more like clown face paint, it was so white. Even in the snow, I was so warm from the climb that the entire way up I didn’t put on the jacket, just a t-shirt or a thermal undershirt. Parts of me were sweating, parts of me were freezing. Adventure is always part pain in the ass.

 

The top of the steep slope was the hardest part of the entire climb, because I was exhausted. I didn’t like the prospect of falling into a slide without an ice axe for a break. Every move was an uncertain step into knee deep snow. At the end of the long steep section, it flattened out, but the cloud closed in even more. There was supposed to be spectacular scenery around me, but I couldn’t see it.

 

After four and a half hours of climbing I heard a cough and saw a man walking towards me, with ski poles. I said “hi” in Russian so he started right in with Russian himself. He said hi, and wondered if I was going to the glacier or heading back. He was worried that I didn’t have the right clothes, since I was in a T-shirt and thermal shirt, but I opened my bag and showed him my coat and he nodded. I tried to tell him that I wanted to see the Am-Say Glacier and then head back to the Ala-Archa Lodge. I don’t think he understood. He motioned for me to follow him, and coughed on the way a few times, wheezy and with phlegm. The camp at Ratsek materialized out of the mist. It looked like an Antarctic research station. Flimsy wooden buildings huddled against the cold. Some of it seemed abandoned. The clouds closed in even more. I could only see about fifty yards now. He opened the Ratsek Hut, just a few mattresses on bunk beds, a tiny wood stove, and some silverware. He knocked the snow off his boots with a whisk broom and then handed it to me. I did the same. He said something in Russian and gesticulated. I held up the broom and he took it from me and tossed it in the corner. I guessed I was supposed to do that. He poured something into a plastic cup.

 

“Chai,” he said, “Limonat.”

 

He poured himself one too. I wondered when the last time it had been washed, but I didn’t want to refuse tea from the keeper of the mountain. 

 

It was lukewarm tea, but spicy and fruity, with leaves floating in it.

 

He gestured for me to sit down.

 

He asked me something in Russian. I didn’t get it.

 

“Kyrgyz,” he said, and tapped his chest. Then he pointed at me.

 

“Americanyets,” I said.

 

American.

 

He nodded, then pointed, presumably towards some hikers who were staying here.

 

“Belarus, Australia,” he said, then he pointed further on, indicating further away, “America.”

 

He had a Belarusian and an Australian in camp, and an American off on a longer climb.

 

He asked me my name in Russian.

 

“Franklin.”

 

He looked at me like it was the damnedest thing he ever heard in his life.

 

“Ranklin?”

 

“Franklin.”

 

“Franklin,” he said, deeply disappointed.

 

He told me his name was “Morat,” he said, and pointed to himself.

 

“Morat,” I said.

 

We nodded.

 

I used gestures to show him I was going to walk to the glacier and head back. He took my plastic cup, dumped what was left of his in it, swirled it around, threw it out the front window and set both glasses on the sink.

 

Then we took a photo together and I left.

 

At the glacier the cloud was now a deep fog and all I made out was an icy hulking shape. I turned around, and passed a rock with memorial plaques to 11 climbers who died on nearby peaks. The largest was for Vladimir Iosofich Ratsek, for whom the camp was named. I stood a minute in the mist and paid my respects. By the time I got to the Ratsek Hut, Morat was gone.

 

On the way down I fell about twenty times, probably more, two of them hard. It was tough to slow myself down in all of that snow, especially with ice and rocks under it. Still, I had it mostly figured out and would walk just long enough to forget I had been falling, and when I would get complacent, that’s when I would fall again. Even if it was more painful, negotiating the steep slope was easier on the way down because I wasn’t dealing with the cardio of climbing. The Ratsek Hut was at 10,800 ft (3300 m), so by the end it had been a battle to keep moving.

 

Lower on the path, I ran into a middle-aged Korean and his Kyrgyz guide. The Korean was kitted out with ski poles, sunglasses, and a kind of Australian outback hat. The guide was a kid, maybe college aged, and spoke English also. I spoke some Korean with the guy. I told him I’d lived in Korea, and was an English teacher there. He wanted to know if I liked Trump. He told me in a flurry of Korean profanity that President Trump, President Abe of Japan, and Vladimir Putin were all crazy. The Kyrgyz asked me in English if I had been back to Korea since I was a teacher. I said I left in 1998, and went back in 2016 to find that they’d become wealthy and sophisticated. I told him that it was like checking up on an old friend and finding out that he had become rich. He translated that for the Korean, who laughed and shook my hand.

 

I stopped to take some photos and the two guys went on without me. On my way back across the frozen stream I saw a small landslide, some very large rocks took a tumble across the trail I was about to take, sending snow and dirt cascading onto boulders below. Only the last 20 minutes of the hike was there any bare ground, parts of the trail where the snow had melted to reveal wet soil that clung to my boots. By the time I got to the Ala Archa Lodge I was ready to eat and sleep.

 

In the restaurant, I had soup that I think had stomach in it, and ate some bread. While I was eating, a Kyrgyz guy burned a handful of dried herbs, as big as a bouquet of flowers. He walked them around the room, letting the smoke float. He was wearing a camouflage suit, the kind you usually see on Russians. He wafted the smoke this way and that, almost absent mindedly while he talked with the cook, and they laughed. I think it was some kind of a shamanist ceremony.

 

I headed to my cozy room with its heated floors, and thought about the day, about broken hearts, long hikes, mountain goats, and golden hunting eagles. And most of all, snow. I had lived the better part of seven years in Florida. Spending an entire day in the snow was a simple pleasure I had missed without even realizing it.