The door to our room swung open at 9 p.m.
“Dinner will be delayed. We were out hunting with illegal guns and we had some trouble with the ecological police. Our owner was arrested, sorry. No more than forty minutes wait.”
The door shut and we sat for a second. We moved inside the dining room to play cards. The room was dark save for a few emergency lights powered by a car battery in the corner. We lit a candle, set it in the middle of the table, and dealt a hand. For the next hour we waited in the candlelight deliberating on a decision made hours before.
Eventually, we were served a plate of noodles with meat. An English-speaking guide, Ermek, sat down at our table. We had planned to hike back down to the city that afternoon, but he had invited us that morning on a hike the following day. He wanted to be the first to summit a high mountain lake that season. He had tried to reach the lake two weeks prior but was stopped in his tracks by snow up to his torso. He planned to attempt the journey the next morning. We intended to join.
His plan was to “open” the hike by setting up rope stations along the hike’s steeper segments. Last season, he told us that he opened the hike at the end of April. A French couple had joined him then. The snow was up to their chest, he said, and they got back after dark. They set out at five in the morning.
We asked more questions as we ate. He was drunk and more passionate that we join him than you would expect someone offering to do his job for free would be. All he wanted of us, he said, was to film a video talking about how much we loved Kyrgyzstan and giving “true feedback” about the hike.
He warned that the hike would be difficult. Promising twelve miles round trip and 5,000 feet in elevation gain, I believed him. We were concerned about our gear. I had a pair of semi-waterproof hiking shoes and no waterproof pants. I would carry an extra pair of socks in my backpack. Jonas had a pair of tennis shoes and jeans. Ermek cast our doubts aside by showing us his mesh Adidas tennis shoes. He said he had forgotten his hiking boots. It didn’t help.
He wanted to leave early in the morning because the snow conditions would be better. The snow would grow wetter as the day went on, so if we started our trek while the snow was still frozen over, we might manage to walk on top of the frozen layer without sinking in. There was no telling what would happen on the walk back down.
We finished eating and confirmed that we would join. It was past midnight by the time we finished eating. My alarm went off at 4:30 in the morning. We rolled out of bed, ate a breakfast of eggs and hot dogs, and set off in the dark.
We walked the first hour through mud with just phone flashlights and the full moon. We turned our flashlights off as the second hour grew gradually brighter and the valley opened up. We followed a river to a bridge. We crossed the bridge, and so began the third hour and with it our climb.
We hit snow twenty minutes after we began to climb. The top layer was not frozen over. Each step pushed frozen crystals into the crack between my sock and the edge of my shoe. We continued for another half hour. Occasionally we reached an island of land where I could stop, remove my shoe, and shake out the snow inside. At some point, our guide stopped us and asked us to wait in a clearing while he went on. We watched as he walked with his snowshoes across a snowy pass, sinking further with each step until we could no longer see his waist. He stopped, looked around, and walked back.
There was too much snow. Worse, the conditions were prime for an avalanche. A wall of grey clouds in the distance reassured us of our decision as we turned back through the snowfields. We felt the first drops when we reached the bottom of the hill.
The rain continued as we made our way back to the hut. It never crescendoed past a drizzle, but it was enough to wet my clothes. I hung them up to dry and headed inside for tea. Once again, we deliberated. It was still well before noon. With reaching the lake out of the question, it made sense to walk the ten miles downhill to Karakol. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still grey. We had two options: leave and risk getting stuck in the rain, or sit around and inevitably get stuck at the hut yet out of the rain. We decided on the former, packed our things, and set out on the second hike of the day.
The rain came three miles into our descent. It was not yet heavy, but it was enough to require raincoats. As I finished tightening mine, a tan, Jeep-looking vehicle from the Cold War approached us from behind and came to a stop. “Karakol?” its driver asked. It was raining and we had been up since four-thirty. We said yes and climbed in, four squeezed in the back and one in the front. The driver asked for five dollars from each of us.
The Jeep should have been retired with the Berlin Wall. Three wires ran from the dashboard up the windshield to where the rear-view mirror once had been. The dashboard featured four dials, two silver switches, six unmarked red and black buttons, and one red button in the middle. The ceiling was exposed insulation. The windows could go neither up nor down, and the whole thing smelt of gas.
We passed the same group of hikers three times on the way down the mountain. There wasn’t really a road. With no maintenance to speak of and constant rocks and dips, our seven-mile ride took over an hour. The laughs at our jeep’s state during the beginning of the ride quickly faded as fatigue and body heat consumed us. Each bump sent elbows flying through the back seat, and every lurch nearly folded the bench seat in upon itself.
An hour and a half later, we rolled out of the little tan jeep in front of our hotel. We rolled out of the car, stretched our legs, and checked in. It was not even one.
Wide Open Road 