Climbing in Kyrgyzstan?

Hey folks! Have any of you done any climbing in Kyrgyzstan? I can’t find much info online about the area, so I am wondering if anybody has general advice, logistic providers, etc.

It would be much appreciated!

I'm going September 12-25th!!! Hoping to climb in the Karavshin Region. The most helpful beta I've found is through the AAJ.  
http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/search/solr?all=kyrgyzstan&article_publication=both

Let me know if you find anything more comprehensive.  When are you going? Where are you looking to climb?

Dan

Chris
I was there climbing for a month in 2000. We climbed in The Tien shan Mtn.s, Karakol and in Ala Archa  near Bishkek. The Yosemite like granite walls are in Aksu Valley. We did not travel there owing to banditry and violence. It is likely a very different environment now and probably should be on your tick list. I traveled with a friend who spoke Russian and knew the country well. He was able to make complex travel arrangements to get us to the glaciers and helicopters to basecamp. I don't know how relevant my experiences are for today's Kyrgyzstan but I can tell you what I knew at the time. The Tien shan's are world class mountaineering. Khan Tengri (7000m) is a beauty, most of the traffic is on the Kazakstan side but we managed to get in and out with just Kyrgyzstan travel visas. Karakol is less known but beautiful and full of mountaineering adventure. There are Trekking and guiding services that can get you to the glacier. Ala Archa is very accessible and I recommend you go check it out. It offers rock, snow and ice for a short beautiful walk in. You can take a cab from your hotel when you fly into Bishkek.
Have fun and don't drink the spirits, Rob 

Chris, I'm sure that you've seen Kyle Dempster's short film "The Road to Karakol" about his solo trip biking (and doing some climbing) in Kyrgyzstan for forty days in 2011.  I'm a schoolteacher, and I sometimes show it to my high school classes.  It's a great little film. 

I was in Karavshin for 3 weeks in August/September 2018 and can provide a bunch of logistical beta, especially for Kara-su which is where we had a base camp.

Travel logistics:
Americans and most westerners don't need visas for stays up to 60 days so that's a good start.
We flew into Bishkek and stayed at Nomad's Land guesthouse and Tunduk Hostel. AJ Johnson is a cool American dude who has been living over there a few years and works at Nomad's Land and we talked with him a month in advance so he could arrange the permit to enter the border region where Karavshin is (also shout out to AJ who has a side business renting out these sweet Soviet Bukhanka vans for anyone looking to make a van trip around Kyrgyzstan which would be sweet I'm sure). Nomad's Land is more of a tour service with the guesthouse as an afterthought, I liked Tunduk much more so I would stay there if I went again.

We flew from Bishkek to Batken on TezJet which I would highly recommend doing. They have 3 flights a week but their flights were only available on their website (which is only in Russian but the automated translate in google chrome worked well enough) and only available to purchase I think starting a month or maybe 2 before the flights. If you buy in advance they are cheap, around $40/person one way, which to me is worth saving the $20 for a cool 1 hour flight vs a 14 hour drive. Also on tezjet extra baggage past the allotment is very affordable at something like 75 us cents for every kg past the 20 kg allotment. Lots of people also fly into Osh and drive from there but I think it worked out to be cheaper to fly on Tezjet to Batken because of the large amount of baggage we had, and in addition Batken is much more convenient.

In Batken we used Batken Travel Service (Junaz-Beck is the guys name, he speaks a little English) to get us transportation, $50 for a van for us and all our stuff to Ozgorush including stopping to shop at the market in Batken and he also sold us isobutane canisters ($9/230g canister). Interesting note but because of the crazy border zig-zags and enclaves you briefly pass through small parts of Tajikistan when driving west from Batken but it's uncontrolled and don't need to worry about Tajik visas or anything(also should note that the old access hike starting from the Tajik enclave of Vorukh, the first village directly downstream from Karavshin, is not allowed anymore). Junaz-beck set us up with Nurdeen in Ozgorush (coords: 39.757, 70.056) and we stayed at his guesthouse for a night and organized the donkeys and guides to pack all our stuff in. The hike into Kara-su from there is super nice and basically 2 full days; I was very glad to have 2 trekking poles. If I remember right horses can carry 60kg each and it's $30/horse/day. Donkey's are half the price but can only carry half the weight so it doesn't matter which one they go with, however I read a Russian report that said they got 50kg on each donkey, should negotiate!

In Kara-su most folks set up base camp by the river at 39.635, 70.268. This is also where a trekking company (Ak-Sai Travel?) has a summer base camp but they had packed up and left by August 20th. Probably not coincidentally that was the day the camp area there goes from getting morning sun at around 930am to 1045am and then a week later 1145am...
In Kara-su you could also camp closer to the rock at 39.624, 70.258 which I would consider doing if I went back. From the Kara-su basecamp it's a pretty easy 3-4 hour hike to get to Ak-su basecamp (39.609, 70.293).
Climbing in both valleys and getting from one to another often requires river crossings. Depending on the time of day and season fording the rivers can vary from reasonable to super sketchy. In Kara-su there are bolts to set up a tyrolean right next to the main camp area so you might consider bringing an old 50ish foot rope to dedicate to leaving there for the duration of your trip. There are also bridges further down the valleys but I understand that these often get wiped out by spring floods so I imagine their locations or existence might change year to year. In 2018 there was a bridge over the Kara-su at 39.652, 70.278 and a bridge over the Ak-su near a cool (ancient?) abandoned village at 39.668, 70.303. In each valley there are slightly better trails on the east sides of the rivers but it is also very reasonable to walk on the west sides in both valleys. You can cut a few miles off the hike between the 2 base camps if you skip the bridges and ford the Ak-su (probably easiest near Ak-su basecamp) and cut over the ridge separating the two valleys where it is pretty reasonable, roughly aiming for this point on the ridge: 39.654 ,70.287.

To get back out to civilization we had originally planned to have Nurdeen's guys pick us up and reverse the way we came in but we ended up changing and going out via Sarai-jaz (39.825, 70.391) with the local shepherds in Karavshin. We decided to change to leave this way because it's a bit easier (1 pass instead of 3) and shorter even though they charged us a little more, but they included a night in their family's house in the village of Samarkandyk and transfer back to Batken for our flight back to Bishkek so it was about the same price in the end. In the end I'm very happy we did it this way so we could see more of the area. If you hike this way make sure to marvel at how there used to be a road along this valley in the 30s that has long since been near completely wiped out, although you can see remnants of some switchbacks way up between the Kara-su glacier and the Silver Wall!

One thing that bummed me out was we had a bag of all our trash such as cans, bottles, etc and the horsepackers refused to carry it out even though I insisted they just laughed like I was crazy for wanting to take trash out and just dumped it among the juniper trees on the way out so I would advise hiding it in the bottom of a haul bag or something to get it packed out.

Supplies:
We bought a lot of things in Bishkek while we were there and only got staples in Batken which worked well. Bishkek had a few large westernized grocery stores as well as a big bazaar.
Here are some things we couldn't find at the stores and market in Bishkek that we thought might be possible but as far as I know aren't: ziplock bags, zip-ties, duct tape, powdered milk, powdered eggs, coconut oil, cocoa, brown sugar, quinoa, couscous (they have millet), canned chili, peanut butter, jelly, protein powder, powdered drink mixes.
We bought heavier staples like rice, flour, sugar, vegetables, nuts, oats, dried fruit, beer, and liquor in the market in Batken. In Batken we also stocked up on these big plastic barrel things which we packed full of food etc.  In Bishkek we got things like a big blue tarp(cruxy to find at the bazaar), nutella, pasta, cheese, and some weird canned meats.
In Batken we also tried to get kerosene for our whisperlite international which they assured us was kerosene but pretty sure it was unleaded gasoline because it burned like shit and covered our pots in black soot.

We didn't really do any of this (I would next time though) but a lot of climbers rent group camping gear from Batken Travel Service, things like a big group tent, table, chairs, 2 burner stoves, metal cooking grate for cooking over fires, bigger pots and pans, cutting board, kitchen knives, saw, hatchet, shovel.

In both Kara-su and Ak-su there are 2-4 shepherds and some family members. In Kara-su there is a woman, Bekah, who actually speaks a bit of English who you can buy bread, sheep meat, and nasty cheese curd/yogurty stuff from so bring cash for that. Also I would advise some sort of tupperware to store meat you buy from her in the stream.

Weather:
We didn't arrive at Kara-su basecamp till mid-August. It seems like all the Russian and Kazakhs (this is their version of the Bugaboos basically) are headed home by then so that probably says something about the ideal time to go. In the 2nd half of August and first week of September we were pretty much never too warm in camp or climbing and often quite cold, but I hear ice fall and dripping rock can be a bigger issue earlier in the season. Basically every day we were there started sunny and blue skies with clouds building and basically overcast by noon or 1 and threatening rain in the afternoon and early evening before clearing. This is kind of unfortunate because the bigger walls face west so they don't see very much sun because of the afternoon clouds. Several days the mid afternoon rains shut us down whereas others it was just a light passing shower but it's very difficult to know how each day will progress. We never had any multi-day storm systems. I didn't have one but was always thinking a barometer might help with divining when it would rain. Overnight lows in camp were around freezing and daytime highs probably got up to about 70 on the hottest days at the start of the trip.
In general the weather was a little colder than what I had anticipated but overall pretty decent for big mountains.

Bugs never seemed to be a problem as far as I can remember!

Rock fall was a significant issue with big ones on several days, especially on Asan and the west face of peak 4810. On a warm up climb on the east side of Little Asan we were 2 pitches up when we heard and felt an absolutely massive rockfall from just around the corner on the east face of Asan that shrouded us in a dust cloud with no visibility for a few minutes which was an eerie way to start the trip.

Kyrgyzstan is an awesome place that's cheap, beautiful, and full of genuinely friendly people (I hardly ever felt like anyone had the idea of trying to screw the foreigners out of their money). I think Kyrgyzstan is a super safe place to travel nowadays.

Your trip will go 10x more logistically smoothly if you spend 20-40+ hours learning Russian (or Kyrgyz if you can but Russian is much easier), and get something better than Duolingo!

Feel free to ask away or message me if you have more questions.

Wow!!! thanks dude! just got off a graveyard so I'll have to process everything later. you rule

That's mad! I should definitely visit Russia and some neighbouring countries soon.

For additional details I would refer you to Tommy Caldwell or Beth Roden. I heard they had a blast last time they were there.

  

Love the stoke in this thread and especially all the great info provided by Kevin Kent - what a cool expedition!

Kevin Kent (and his Partner Sam Wilson, who I meet with here in Portland for a beer) were very very helpful in providing me with really good beta for my trip to Kyrgyzstan in Sept 2019.  

My partner and I rented a 4x4 SUV and had a great experience roadtripping around the country.  Got pulled over 3 times and it was super chill, one cop even gave me a hug.  
We also got sim cards for our phones in the Bishkek airport for like 4 bucks which gave us data for two weeks.  
Climbed in Ala Archa National Park which is pretty rad (not the best rock climbing venue in the world, but a superb alpine setting none the less.)
The Kyrgyz People are hospitable and kind and they don't treat you like a tourist (like in Thailand or Tijuana),  it was actually really refreshing, to travel to a developing country and have a very positive two sided interaction with the local people.  We would frequently stop on the side of the road only to have herders roll up on horses and stop what they were doing to drink our whiskey and share their fermented horse milk with us.  

Would highly recommend visiting Kyrgyzstan!!!

Dan, You didn't enjoy the Horse Milk? I loved the fermented fizzy flavor. Great job in Al Archa! I dream of returning.
Rob

Robert Townley wrote: Dan, You didn't enjoy the Horse Milk? I loved the fermented fizzy flavor. Great job in Al Archa! I dream of returning.
Rob

HARD NO!  Can confirm that Horse Milk (and especially fermented horse milk) is bar none the worst thing I've ever had the opportunity taste.  Just plain awful. lol makes for a good story though

Quick plug, I live in neighboring Tajikistan, which is also an amazing place for climbing/trekking/everything outdoors. If anyone wants information (or a partner), hit me up!

What do conditions look like late may- mid June in the Aksu Valley?