Khan Tengri summit (6995m)

This posting is a record of a climbing expedition to the Tien Shan mountains of Central Asia (24th July – 22 Aug 1999). It is one of the great mountain ranges of the world though relatively unknown and unexplored due to its remote location and the politics of the area. About two-thirds of the Tien Shan lie in Kirghizstan, a new state which got its independence in 1991 following the break up of the USSR and borders Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China.

The main aim of the trip was to visit the South Inylchek Glacier and attempt to climb one or both of the two giants there namely Khan Tengri (6995m) and Peak Pobeda (7439m) and also Gorky Peak (6050m) a lower but technically harder mountain.

The nine members of the expedition flew from Manchester via Amsterdam to the Kazakh Capitol Almaty. Next it was a rough ten-hour truck journey to Karakol where we picked up supplies of food from the local bazaar and had an overnight stop. early next morning it was back on the truck for an even rougher five-hour ride to Maidaadyr which was literally the end of the road. From here a helicopter took us up the enormous Inlychek glacier and dropped us off in the Putevodny Basin, a tributary glacier to the Inlychek, Here we were surrounded by unclimbed mountains and hoped to acclimatise to the altitude and do some climbing. Eight days later the helicopter returned and took us further up the South Inlychek glacier to the main base camp area of Khan Tengri where we based ourselves for the rest of the trip.