Close call in Karakol!

It snowed a bit overnight (a few cm…) so we figured we kept exploring the slackcountry of Karakol ski resort. 

There are 3 lifts that we have seen running. Only one of them give access to the top of the mountain. We still haven't figure on which schedule this one is running since we've seen it open at different hours 10h00, 9h40 and 11h25…

We we got to the mountain, it wasn't running, so we slapped our skins and hiked the 120m or so that was separating the top of the second highest chairlift from the top of the mountain. Just as we got to the top, the main chairlift just start running…. I guess we really haven't got it yet!

We kept hiking all the way to the nearby peak about 400m higher than the top of the resort. As we got to the top, we didn't have the visibility we were hoping for. We waited a little bit and we thought we were able to have a clear view from the run that we were hoping to tackle. 

We carefully stepped on the backside run and check to see if the snow was better than on the frontside. I made one turn, then another one and the snow was different but didn't feel any stable. For the first time of my life, I figured it wouldn't be a good slope to ski on since there wasn't any distinct ridge to safely ski on and decided to skin back to the top. 

From the top, we skied some low angle stuff to get back close to the slope we skied the day before. On our way down, we saw some ski tracks that looked not as deep as what we were experiencing. We thought it might be some suncrust/windcrust snow so that it might be a bit safer and stable. 

I venture a bit on the slope to check the stability and didn't like it too much, so I hiked back on the ridge. After a bit of discussion and by looking a bit more closely, we thought it would be better lower down, so the final call was to give it a go. The turns were deep and the snowpack wasn't too stable. We made our way down and saw some tracks on a nearby slopes that (again!) look good. I venture a bit further to check it when my dad scream: WATCH OUT!

I quickly checked over my shoulder to see about a meter of snow quickly making it way down. I guess what should happened finally happen since I triggered a fairly big slab avalanche. I quickly climb to the nearby ridge to get to a safe spot as the snow was raging just next to me, but the slope in front of me started moving as well… Just a few meter in front of me went another avalanche. Then, it started cracking above me…. and then around me. As you might expected, I finally went down as well! Luckily, most of the crux of the avalanche as already slid and I wasn't moving too fast. I finally had a ride of about 100m and ended up buried only to my knees. 

I would guess this was a size 2.5 avalanche and certainly the biggest one I've ever triggered. We played it safe all day to finally let our guard down as we were almost to the bottom of the run….

We skied out without any other incident but we crossed some new natural avalanche that weren't there the day before. We were both really glad about that happy ending that could have been much worst. 

That incident confirm what we were expecting since the beginning of our journey in Karakol (that the snowpack was really unstable…) and did cut a bit our motivation to ski. We figured it would be a good idea to go do some shopping at the bazar of Karakol and buy the needed souvenirs for the family! It was again a really nice experience to venture in the twisting alleys and having a view of how people shop around Central Asia. 

                            

Walking around towns certainly has some hazards; the (really!!!) icy sidewalks, the sliding cars and the missing manhole cover!! Those last one are quite dangerous, when walking at night in the non-lighted streets!!

Even if shopping was interesting, we figured we would be better skiing, so we went back to the resort. We figured that if we stayed around the heavily skied area the snow would be safe enough. It had snowed again a bit and we had some really good turns. 

                             

By just sliding slightly out of bounds, we were accessing some chopped up, but really soft snow. We both concluded that those were our best turns so far in our trip. 

At night, we met with Ryan Koupal from 40 Tribes over dinner. 

He has been in Kyrgyzstan for 3 years and had started a nice backcountry operation in a nearby town from Karakol. He is offering some professionally guided tour out of a traditional Kyrgyz hut. Unfortunately for us, he didn't has any vacancy and was fully booked for the complete duration of our stay in Kyrgyzstan. He told us that the conditions were really good around his hut in January, but now was also a bit unstable. 

He generously told us about some various options we were having in Kyrgyzstan. One of them caught our attention. Apparently, from the town of Arslanbob in the southwest of the country, there was some good skiing to be done. There might also be some opportunity to sleep in some shepperd's hut to access some really good backcountry. 

My Dad and I quickly agreed that it would be our best bet. If the skiing wasn't nice, then at least, it would be good to change scenery and town. We were both a bit down from not being able to ski anything steep because of a rotten snowpack and we felt like we have seen much of what Karakol itself had to offer has a town. 

This morning, we packed everything and called a taxi to make it back towards Bishkek to try to catch a plane towards Osh (Kyrgyzstan's second largest town). This 1 hour flight will cost about 40$ and save us a 10+ hour drive over some icy mountain pass. 

Mountains scenery followed us all the way back to Bishkek during this 5 hours drive. We ask our driver not to drive too fast since we heard about a car accident where 3 client's of Ryan were involved in a high speed collision. Since the driver are driving really fast with some quite crappy cars, it was good to have a safe driver. 

As we got to Bishkek, we bought our plane tickets for the following morning and went for some traditional dinner. 

                              

Now we are just hoping that we've made the good decision to change and we are hoping for the best!

Cheers, 

evans

Discovering Kyrgyzstan's ski resorts!

We finally left Bishkek to check out the nearby mountain in the Kyrgyz Ala-Tau range. Those mountains lay only 35km south of the Kyrgyz capital. From the information I had, there was 4-5 different ski resorts with a vertical ranging from 500m to 1500m.



We arranged a taxi, the night before to pick us up in the morning. Our little russian was enough to make ourselves understood since the guy showed up as planned at 8h00AM. We squished all our gear into the taxi and off we were to finally ski.



As we got closer to the mountain, we had to realize that the snow cover was really thin. It was much thinner than what we thought from the view we were having in town.


It was too thin to ski the backcountry and the resort were certainly not having the vertical that they were supposed to have. In fact, all of the 'resorts' consist mainly of 1 or 2 lifts mainly tow-rope or t-bar.




To add to the beauty, they weren't link together so it wasn't possible to ski all of them with one pass and since we were during the weekdays, there wasn't a lot of skier and much of the 'big' lifts were close.

It certainly didn't qualify as a skier's paradise. With not much good snow to ski, we made the call to just drive back to Bishkek to organize our next journey towards Karakol home of the best ski resort of Kyrgyzstan.

During the drive back, our taxi broke down. I guess this is not quite surprising from a 320 000km beat up car! The suspension tab broke and we had to wait almost a full afternoon until we had one of the taxi driver's friend to come and pick us up. I certainly don't think that one should make the journey to Kyrgyzstan to come and ski to those resorts.



Finally back to Bishkek, we easily arranged a pick-up towards the town of Karakol. To get a taxi to drive you is not hard, but what is hard is to get the right price for the ride. After a bit of negotiation and cross-checking the price, it is finally not so much hard to do.




The following morning, we again left our hotel for the about 400km drive between Bishkek and Karakol. The drive through that really rugged country took us about 6 hours. On the way, we follow the mountain and the lake Issy-Kul. The scenery are certainly really nice and worth keeping your eyes open.







We finally arrived in Karakol without any problem.

This town of about 70 000 inhabitants of eastern Kyrgyzstan lay just north of the Central Tian Shan Mountains. One thing that is really nice in Karakol compare to Bishkek is that we can walk at night without having to worry about being attacked or harassed. It actually feel really safe here; much more than what I had originally thought before coming here.







This range of mountains has various peaks over 7000m that has never been climbed due to their remote locations. It also has the largest of Kyrgyzstan ski resort only 25 minutes south of it's downtown.




We aim straight to the resort the following day. The first view we got was really promising despite the poor visibility and we were both quite excited by our next stomping ground. It certainly looks more like a ski resort than the other one we've seen so far in Kyrgyzstan. With 4 chairlifts bought use from European resorts, we had access to some really nice terrain inbound. The lifts also gave access to some really nice terrain just outside of their boundaries. You could easily took the lifts, ski the nearby slopes and catch the lifts to ride back up.



First thing we did off the lifts was to check the off-piste. As soon as we stepped out to the untracked slopes, we quickly realize that the snowpack was really not stable. There was about 70cm of snow on the ground and most of it was either depth hoar or facets. The 20-30cm layer of unstable snow made it really hard to ski since we were sinking almost down to the ground at every turn. Almost overstep we made in the fresh snow was accompanied by a wumph and some shooting crack in the snowpack.



We played it safe since we didn't had a really good visibility and didn't venture too far out of bounds to get use to the snowpack.

We enjoyed the following morning to check out the animal market of Karakol which is one of the biggest of Central Asia.



There is literary more than a thousands of sheep, hundreds of cows and horse that change hands during that day.



To bring them in and out of the market, the farmers put their livestock in the truck of their Lada or on the back seat. We counted 5 fully alive sheep in the trunk of a single Lada and we also witnessed 3 guys trying to squeeze a calf into the trunk of a sedan! I certainly think that this is a must see for anyone visiting Karakol.





We left the market and catch a taxi to the ski resort where we got around noon.




The visibility was much better this time and we figured it would be a nice to check out a bit the slackcountry. From the top of the resort, it is possible to climb 400m with a snowcat for about 15$. We figured it would be just as nice to simply skin up while enjoying the view of the surroundings mountains.

From the top, the view was fairly spectacular. The nearby mountains had some really nice open slope. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a much better snowpack where we were. We skied down on a ridge to stay safe and we made it down while having some fairly decent turns.






There are other slopes that we were interested in checking from the resort so this is what we have lined up for the coming days. I'm now just hoping that the skiing conditions will get better!



Cheers,
evans