Pamir Mountains – hiking / packrafting

[Marcel Bak]

Hi,

In one month's time I am about to go on ~500 km solo, packrafting / hiking trip in the Pamirs (Tajikistan; Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province).

Altitude: between 3,500 MAMSL (at Murghab Plateau) and 4,500 MAMSL (highest passes). This translates to roughly 11,500 ft-14,500 ft.
Expected temperatures: between 5-15 degrees Celsius during the day (maybe up to 20 C), with cold nights down to -10 degrees Celsius. Water probably not warmer than 5-10 degrees Celsius.
Humidity: due to altitude the air is very dry.
Other: possible strong winds, stormy weather expected (mostly rain, though snowstorm may occur).
Terrain: from open landscape (think – big sky country / windswept rolling plateau) to narrow valleys. Very little vegetation.
From packrafting perspective: rivers probably up to WW II + / WW III-, with the main difficulty being the amount of water (no pool drops or large rocks – except near Sarez Lake) due to soft geology. Stretch from Murghab to Sarez has been kayaked many times by both Westerners and Soviet/Russian kayakers. Still some of the rivers in the eastern Pamirs appear to attract very little attention. I assume this is probably because of too much hassle with the kayak – rivers are too easy compared to fantastic rivers in the mountains.
Timing wise it will be somewhere in early autumn.

The below image presents the route:

I will be travelling via Istambul (Turkey) and Osh (Kirgistan). From Osh I plan to take taxi / marshrutka to Murghab. Probably 1-2 days I will stay in the city to acclimate myself to the altitude. The start and finish is in the city of Murghab. Looking at the image it follows counterclockwise.

Depending on the weather conditions, local situation (permission to hike near Chinese / Afghan border) & progress it may be possible to stretch the trip a bit. Natural way would be venturing into Sarikol Range on the south-eastern part of Tajikistan, but I doubt anyone is be able to enter this area. Otherwise, I may also hike a bit more to the west of Alichur (please note that Sarez lake requires special permit from Ministry of Environment, so it is too much hassle) …

The gearlist for this trip is available in my profile. I would appreciate if you could comment on it.

Hope to get some feedback from you.

[M G]

Sounds like an excellent trip. I spent time Kyrgyzstan further north working, climbing trekking and hiking 10 years ago. Beautiful mountains.

Most members here are likely not familiar with the geography so giving the a range of altitudes, expected lows and highs and the terrain/conditions you expect to encounter will probably be helpful.

BTW my avatar is a topographic map of the Aksu region I made for the American Alpine Journal.

[Marcel Bak]

Hi M G!

Thanks for reply. I edited the post a little bit.

I was thinking about Kyrgyzstan too…! Can you share a link or two with any of your articles or photos?

Anyways, I also had idea about venturing into Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan in winter time. Any thoughts about it? I've seen 1-2 Russian reports about it, otherwise seems it is barely visited due to vast amount of snow, cold temperatures and storms.

In terms of maps – I will be using Gecko Map, maybe do some printouts of old soviet maps (loadmap.net). Worked quite ok in Mongolia.

[M G]

Gecko is good as are Russian maps. I was there in September and got snow. Don't remember particularly cold temps typical mountain conditions.

[Walter Carrington]

Marcel, be sure to check on the political safety of the Pamir and of Osh. As you probably know there was serious ethnic violence in Osh 4 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_South_Kyrgyzstan_ethnic_clashes#Outbreak
Since you're in Poland, your media probably has more info on these matters than in the USA.

MG: I see from your profile that you're a cartographer. You may find it amusing that there is a Peak of Military Cartographers (6873m)(Peak of Military Topographers or Voennyh Topografov Kitai). It is near Pobeda. This is one of my favorite mountain names.
http://www.mountain.ru/eng/adventure/2003/Tyan-shan/

[Marcel Bak]

Walter,

Thanks for input!

Yes, I do remember those clashes. Also, there were also clashes in nearby Khorog in 2012 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Gorno-Badakhshan_clashes). My friend has been there at that time. Similarly, in May / June 2014 there were some shootings and tensions in Khorog, which caused problems with being granted GBAO permit. I keep my fingers crossed for calm journey.

M G,

With respect to temperatures I am somewhere in-between the sleeping bags. One choice is to take 300g of down which usually kept me warm & cozy down to -6/-7 Celsius. The other option is winter bag, with 600g of down (works for me down to around -22/24 Celsius). Weight-wise this is 480g difference. But this choice I will make just before the flight – based on the information from Murghab and weather forecasts (yes, I am aware that these are very high level).

[Marcel Bak]

Hello,

Just recently I returned from Tajikistan. Some photos available in the Picasa gallery. I hope you will enjoy them!

Route-wise, I had to shorten the last packrafting stretch – there was hardly any water in the Issyk river (this may be due to the small amount of snow accumulated in the winter time and lack of rain in summer time). Otherwise, the Aksu/Murghab river and Pamir river had plenty of water (slightly different drainage basins for those rivers compared to Issyk).

Additional comment – neither methyl/T-röd, nor Primus gas were available locally, therefore I had to go with the heaviest option – MSR XGK, which was a total overkill :)

I also would like to add that I encountered numerous problems with SPOT device. Initially, I thought that the lack of satellite coverage is the problem, but it turns out otherwise. I will be contacting customer service promptly. This is the second time SPOT stopped working during the trip (previously, the device was replaced very fast by SPOT). Unfortunately, for most of the time I was without the SPOT tracking :/

Let me know in case of any questions!

Marcel

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