All the weather you could possibly handle, Aug 28-30

Yours truly at the 3900 meter Ala-Köl pass.

I decided to go on a short-ish three-day hike in the mountains above Karakol. This as partly to see how I handled high altitudes before going on the two-week trek from Talas next week. Well, I’m happy to report that not only did I handle the altitude well, but my gear also handled the weather pretty fine. During three days we not only had all the beautiful landscapes that I have now come to forever connect Kyrghyzstan with, but also all possible weather types.

The first day was constant raining from lunch until we went to bed. When I woke up on the second day, the temperature was well below zero, with the rain from yesterday turned into ice. And during the 9-hour trek to the next valley (we walked over a 3900 meters mountain pass), we had sunshine, rain, snow and hail back and forth, changing every other five minutes. We literally went from freezing temperatures with snow to 20+ degrees and sunshine in five minutes and then back, a few times. Weird!

So arriving to to the base camp at Altyn Aryshyn with it’s hot springs did indeed feel very good! Not to mention the cold beer…

So now I’m definitely more confident about next week’s trek, especially since we will have porters to carry the luggage, as well as having the meals cooked for us. It will be like an actual vacation in comparison!