Alex and Christina's honey moon
Russia - Siberia - The Altay
24th August 2004 to 12th
September 2004
Day 10: We took all our baggage out of the van and Jenia managed to find a way across the ford. He then drove us into the foot hills bellow the Ak-Tru glacier.
Rebecca’s knee was not completely healed and the terrain was steep, rough and at high altitude, Rebecca found the ascent very difficult, so Nikolai flagged down a passing 1951 Russian jeep which took the women, children and heavy baggage up to the mountaineering station while Nikolai, Alex and Daddy hiked the rest of the way.
The women and children arriving at
mountaineering station at foot of Ak-Tru glacier in a 1951 Russian jeep on
03/09/04
They passed excavations left by field archaeologists the previous year and a herdsman’s yurt. The water in the rivers and lakes is generally so pure you can drink it untreated.
In this case, Daddy was the only one to try it out and suffered a very painful tummy ache after dinner that evening. It made the trek back the next day much more difficult for him. He kept his coat done up while everyone else was stripping off, although he kept pace with everyone he couldn’t generate any heat and had no energy all the way.
In the afternoon Mummy, Rebecca and Daddy went with Nikolai up onto the terminal moraine of the Ak-Tru glacier along beautiful mountain terrain.
A view of Ak-Tru from the lateral moraine on 03/09/04
Ak-Tru is actually three glaciers, called Middle, Small and Large Ak-Tru. We were visiting Middle Ak-Tru, which, pictured here, happened to be ‘the one on the left’.
We spent the night in a beautiful log cabin house called Caran d’Ache(as in the company that makes pencils). The Russians translated it for us as Pencil House. It had a log fire and a wood burning stove. The beds weren’t very nice though and the toilet is the little triangular hut you can see on the right of the photo.
The Caran d’Ache cabin at the Ak-Tru mountaineering station on 03/09/04
It was very comfortable, although the electrics would have been illegal in the UK. Daddy had caught the sun. The weather was as beautiful as the scenery.