kayakstan.net :: Day 11 - Into the snow
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The next day we headed out of Karakol and started up towards the Chon Ashuu pass. The pass itself is at an altitude of 3822m so its slow going in a big truck. We were heading for the back-end of beyond, and had even taken extra petrol barrels on board to be able to make it far enough. Filling these barrels resulted in our biggest petrol stop yet - a massive 840l of fuel between the two trucks. We had to stop halfway through and pay as the petrol pump price counter was about to click all the way back round to zero!
We had spent most of the morning resupplying, and only made it about halfway up the pass by evening. Even at this altitude it made for a chilly night. An early start the next morning, with super efficient packing-up due to the cold saw us at the top of the pass by mid-morning... and it was covered in snow. Never people to pass up an opportunity, we made sure we got in a smidgen of snow-boating before we dropped back below the snowline. Rob's boat will never quite be the same again.
After a resonably short descent, we arrived at the main river of the region, the Saryjaz. A bit of investigation proved that although it had plenty of volume, in its upper reaches it has a consistently low gradient. So our attention turned to its tributaries. The first to be tackled was the Kerolu, which has one of the worse tracks we've passed along up the side. This trib, unfortunately, is not destined to be a classic. Apart from the motion sickness induced by driving upstream, the river has a distinct lack of gradient, occasionally meandering through wide deltas. Couple that with the altitude chill, and a biting upstream wind meant that it was not a group favourite.
Hoping that better was to come, we drove further downstream the Saryjaz until dark.