This year we had a wonderful trip to the Altai mountains. The Altai mountains (which are translated as Golden Mountains) are located in the southwestern part of Siberia, close to the border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. We heard from our friends that it is a great place to go, but did not know how to get there. From one point of view, we worried that we had not done mountain climbing for ages, and we did not feel certain that we could do it ourselves without a guide or a group. From another viewpoint, Richard worried about being part of a completely Russian group (which frequently depart from the Barnaul and Novosibirsk), because of the language problem. At the same time, the options that we found through the Internet for foreign people were not good for us: the timing was wrong, and the price was too high. My friends in Moscow recommended to me Dmitry, who is professional mountain guide and who lives in the Barnaul. I phoned him in Barnaul, and he agreed to guide our trip to Altai at a time convenient for us with the length of the trip that we could manage. The price was very reasonable. He recommended that we bring very good shoes for extensive walking in the mountains and warm clothes, including warm sweater and alaska-type coat for the case of colder weather. He also proposed that he would give us new raincoats, which we could use for free and keep them in case if we liked them. He also told us that there would be a second guide in our group, Sergey. Dmitry (or, Dima) seemed to be not very talkative, but at the distance of two thousand kilometers it become clear that he is someone cared about us, and this was reassuring. We agreed to go to the Central Altai, so that we would be able to see tall mountains and the tallest in Siberia mountains, Belukha. We planned our trip to start on July 25 and to end on August 5.

July 25 - 26

We flew from Moscow to Barnaul by Siberian Airlines, which was nice in many respects, including the price (it was $180 for the round trip). We arrived on time, about 6:30 in the morning, and Dima was waiting for us with his car “Zhiguli” in the airport. We were surprised that it was very cold, T = + 8 C which was much colder than in Moscow, where it was +30C. We understood that it was unusual weather for the Barnaul area. We were not scared, however, because anyway we expected that it might be below zero (centigrade) in the mountains.

Dima gave us very interesting tour of Barnaul, which is a nice looking city, with many new buildings and interesting architecture. The most interesting for us was to see the great Siberian river Ob’, which we never seen before. In Barnaul the river is pretty narrow, and only starts its long journey to the North. We relaxed few hours after our overnight flight to Barnaul and in the middle of the day we started to drive to the Altai Mountains. Dima introduced us to our second guide, Sergey, who was very friendly.

It is well known that Altai mountains are a remote place, because it takes many hours to drive from any of Siberian large cities: Novosibirsk or Barnaul. We knew, too, that some regions of the Altai are closer to these cities and, as Dima told us, are also very beautiful. But I really missed high montains, where I have not been 15 years, so for that reason we chose to have the very long drive to the Central Altai. Soon we realized that the driving is fun. Our guides were talking non-stop during many hours, explaining the history and geography of the different regions, which we passed. We were surprised by their knowledge of the Altai. Later we learned, that both guides have college education in history, so that we felt fortunate to have such guides. I translated to Richard for many hours and was pleased to notice that Dima often adds more exact words for translation. He explained that he finished English school in the Barnaul, which gave pretty good knowledge of English. Later, he spoke with Richard without translation. He also told me that he knows some German, because he lived in Germany for a while and has also guided some tours with German tourists.

This day we drove about 6 hours and stopped at the bank of the Katun’ river, some 60 kilometers beyond the city Gorno-Altaisk. It was a nice place to stay. Dima happened to be very good cook. He cooked a tasty dinner for us, and we enjoyed eating dinner and sitting near the camp fire. We had very good night's sleep, because the tent was convenient and the air was fresh.

July 27

Next day we continued our way along the Chuiski tract. We passed many interesting valleys and geological formations. Some places reminded us of valleys in New Mexico, but most of them were very unusual. Our guides continued to supply us with the precious information about these places. The most amazing was to pass the places of Russian settlements. These people were sent to these places by Stalin long ago, and stayed there. All villages , rivers and creeks there had cute Russian names. We also saw villages of old believers. It was also interesting to learn that different areas of Altai have very different microclimates. It may be cold in one valley but very warm in another. There is even a botanical garden in one of valleys with tropical plants. Unfortunately, we drove through all these interesting places without a stop, because we did not have time for looking around. We drove about 9 hours and stopped at the Katun’ river, very close to the place for beginning mountain trip. Here, the Katun river was very different from the one that we saw one day ago: it had a beautiful green color and seemed much prettier than the one yesterday. We put up our tents and, again, Dima cooked a very tasty dinner. We were surprised by the variety of food which he took with him, and with his ability to make excellent food in the outdoor conditions. This was an unexpected and pleasant part of the trip, because we did not expect anything other than the standard dry food that is typically taken to the mountains.

July 28

Next day we drove to the tourist base “Visotnik” near the village Tyungur, where we left our car. We had driven 8 kilometers to the mountains and then started trekking along the left bank of the Kucherla river. We planned to go to the mountain lake Kucherkinskoe along the Kucherla river. Our guides first wanted to check to see if we are able to walk with backpacks without having had long experience. We found the trail wide and easy. Some people used horses which were provided by the local Altai people. Our guides decided, however, not to take a horse this time. We did not object, because one of our goals was to practice long walking along the mountain trails.

The weather was nice, and we really enjoyed walking. We observed closely a variety of the alpine flowers. The variety of types of flowers and their colors and shapes were amazing, and we tried to observe this wonderful nature with wide-open eyes and minds. When the trail continued through taiga , we noticed many bushes of the black currant. This berry is a typical one in any Russian garden or dacha, but it was amazing to see many healthy bushes of the black currant in taiga. Our guides has shown us the bushes of ZHIMOLOST’ (this is the Russian name) which we had never seen before, and knew only from the literature. The berries of zhimolost are edible, and later Dima made preserves from this berry, which we tried first time in our lives.

There were several other groups which were going along the same trail to Kucherlinskoe lake. A number groups choose this path for beginning of their mountain travel. Fortunately, we were going along at a reasonable speed, like many other tourists. We carried only our sleeping bags and personal stuff. Our guides, who carried all food and other equipment necessary for camping, were going faster. They proposed that they will move ahead and will make lunch. We agreed. After another hour of walking we enjoyed to sit, to relax and to have lunch . After many hours of walking we were pretty tired and started to realize how convenient it is to have these thoughtful guides, who were helping us to see this beautiful natural setting. We stopped for lunch at the place where some ancient local people painted goats more than 10,000 years ago.

We continued our way along the trail, which gradually led us to higher altitudes. We saw layers of mountains covered with beautiful Siberian pine trees, and the green-blue river, which sometimes was far away, and sometimes was so close, that we washed our salty faces and hands and poured some water into our drinking bottles. The white tops of mountains, which were far away, came closer and closer with each step. Toward the end of the day we pretty tired but were pleased to hear from Dima and Sergei that we had gone more than half of the way to the lake. Again, Dima cooked a nice dinner, and we enjoyed the meal and talking with our guides near campfire. One can guess that we had very good night's sleep.

July 29

When we woke up, it was unusually cold, and something heavy was on the wings of the tent. We looked out and saw that everything around was white from the snow. Big snowflakes originated somewhere far in the sky and slowly fell down to the trees, to the tent, to the ground. Dima and Sergey were already cooking breakfast and told us that we should better stay in the tent and have a breakfast there. They gave us a mesh (PSHENKA- Russian name) and we both really enjoyed it. Hot coffe was the most welcome. In the past, when I’ve been in different mountain expeditions, we often cooked in the snow or heavy rain. But now I really appreciated having our guides take care of us. After breakfast, we decided to go out when snow converted to a mixture of snow and rain. Everything around us was wet. It would be nice to have a campfire, but it seemed to be impossible to do it. But Richard succeeded in making a camp-fire. He has a great experience from camping in Wisconsin, where he was responsible for making fire, and where sometimes they had rain during 7 days in the raw. When he started the fire, the guides and Richard brought a lot of wood, and our campfire become so huge, that were able to dry out our clothes and warm up. The rain continued and continued. It was about 2 pm already, and we started to debate, should we go to the trail this day. I asked, where is our trail, and Dima showed me a small waterfall at the right side of the tent. I found it very funny to climb up the waterfall. So, everybody agreed, that we should stay and go the next day. We had a lot of time to relax, to talk, to enjoy fire and beautiful views of the river and nearby mountains, covered with the fresh snow.

This day, adding to the excellent dinner, Dima extracted from somewhere a small can of real salmon cavier, which was very, very tasty. We had never had such a delicacy in camping conditions. Even at home, we rarely have this luxury item. This attention by Dima really brightened our day (I mean, evening).

July 30

This day the weather was simply excellent. The dry air and early sun quickly dried up our trail, and now the place that was a waterfall yesterday looked like a regular steep part of the trail. We had breakfast, packed our backpacks, and went along the trail. There was another day of walking to reach the lake. It was nice interesting day, in which we were gradually climbing higher and higher. Most of the time we went along the river Kucherla. When we expected that the lake should soon appear, we found that the trail left the river, and we were walking along taiga, going mostly up. Suddenly, then, the space opened, and a beautiful mountain lake appeared before our eyes. It was a memorable view.

The lake was surrounded with mountains, mostly covered with the forest. Much higher mountains were seen far ahead. We went down to the lake and soon found a place for our camp. We were pretty tired and the next day decided to walk around the lake with no backpacks.

July 31

This day Dima stayed in the camp, while Sergey, Richard and I went around the lake. The trail was pretty difficult, it went up and down, but we enjoyed seeing this lake from different sites. The length of the lake was about five miles, but we walked about five hours and soon understood that it is almost time to return back. We passed the lake and went along the river, which was running to the lake. There we have seen very cute small animals, which were darting to the water and back. The name of the animal is SUROK in Russian and the marmot in English. Richard was specifically pleased, because he dreamed to see this mammal. Sergey and I decided to climb up and look around, while Richard stayed to watch the marmots. We promised to return back in 10 minutes. We climbed along pretty steep MORENA, and suddenly I realized how interesting and how enjoyable it is to see new mounains and new horizons appear with each step. I understood that we need to try to go to the saddle Kara-Tyurek, where we earlier planned to go. I understood that I want to go there very much and we need to go. The Kara-Tyurek saddle is one of the ways to reach Belukha, which is the tallest Siberian mountain. Belukha is expected to be seen very well from Kara-Tyurek in case of good weather. I realized that it might be difficult for us, because we had limited time, and we had lost one day as a “snow day”, but the desire to see these places was stronger than simple rationality.

We returned back to the camp later than we planned. Dima was waiting for us with another tasty dinner. But not only dinner ! During this time, he collected this exotic berry ZHIMOLOST and made a very delicious preserve from this berry. This evening we had a campfire again. We talked about music and poetry.

August 1

On the map the saddle Kara-Tyurek looked such that we could reach it going straight up and then traversing more along the main ridge of mountains which we saw from the camp. But our experienced guides told us that it will be faster if we will return back along the trail and then take a trail up to the saddle. We went this way and soon they found the necessary trail, and we went up. We enjoyed seeing how taiga become not so high and deep, how the space opens up, and big white mountains appear, pretty close to us, and more mountaines appeared in other directions at father distances. It was a very scenic spot when we went through the bright green cedars. and mountains looked at us through the branches of cedars. The cedars were full of cedar coins, which had very tasty nuts inside them.

We decided to have a camp at the point closest to the saddle, so that we passed through the beautiful cedar forest and went up. We found a fantastic place for the camp: very close to the mountain ridge with views to several saddles and tops. The sunset was wonderful. The last rays of the sun showed us a symphony of colors and light in reflections in the mountains, in the sky and in the clouds. We could not stop watching these amazing views and were really excited. We were really happy to be there. We expected that the night will be really cold, but it was not.

Thanks to our guides, we came to this place in relatively short time. Later, we met people, who travelled from the Kucherlinskoe lake one day longer, because they did not find the trail, or because they had chosen the wrong path.

August 2

We woke up very early, around 5 AM, because we wanted to see Mount Belukha from the Kara-Tyurek pass, and at the same time we knew that we needed to walk half of the way back to the camp. The airplane tickets, which we had, strongly limited our further plans. We had breakfast, and at 6 AM start ascent of the Kara-Turek pass. We left backpacks and all of our stuff in the camp .The weather was gorgeous, and it was not cold. The sun was to rise. New gorgeous wiews opened up from all sides. In front of us, where the main Katun Ridge was located, the mountains were higher and more massive. Behind us, the layers of lower mountains were spread to far distances, layers after layers, like on the paintings of Nikolay Reurikh.

The high alpine flowers were still growing here and there, including beautiful yellow poppy-seed flower, and the Golden Root flower. Some flowers were growing through the snow, which was sparkling in the first lights of sun, like thousands of dimonds. We reached the pass pretty fast, in about two hours. The view which opened up was great: in perfect visibility, we observed all white, gorgeous Mount Belukha (Belukha - means “white”). There were many other high mountains around it.

We saw the Akkem lake far ahead. We really enjoyed observing this view and were very excited and pleased to be there. Unfortunately, time was going fast, and we needed to head down to the camp and then down to the main trail leading from the Kucherlinskoe lake to home. After about 1.5 hours of descent, we noticed our camp, a small “dot” near the river. Soon we retuned back to the camp, had lunch and start to descend. After a while, our trail went along the Tekelyu river. This river, which has somewhat gentle name “Tekelyu,” was in fact very powerful river, like a tiger, jumping up and down, very fast, and roaring all the way. The hillside was so steep, that it reminded me more a waterfall than the river. There were a few real waterfalls on the way. Our trail was at the left side of the river: it was a steep and pretty difficult trail. Fortunately, we already had a lot of practice with mountain trails, so that the descent was not extremely difficult but pretty slow. Some places of the trail were somewhat dangerous, and needed caution. Richard was specifically excited with this trail. He continuously made pictures, and told me that this is his favorite part of the trip. I liked this trail too, but will recommend that everyone to be careful there. Fortunately, it was not rainy. It would be much more difficult during the rain. 

We went this 5 miles in about 5 hours. Our guides watched every step we took in the dangerous places. Finally, we reached our main trail and started going faster to the direction of home. The Kucherla river was even more beautiful than before. In the sun light, the water looked particularly green and clear.We went about 5 miles and stopped overnight. Everybody was pretty tired. The next day was not expected to be easy one as well. In spite of this effort, we felt very happy: we saw so many picturesque views. We had acampfire and talked about different topics. We were sorry that we needed to go back so early. We would like to stay another few days, but the chain of airplane tickets pushed us back, to Moscow and further, to the US.

August 3

We woke up pretty early and felt tired from the previos day. The best plan would be to stay there and to enjoy nature. Instead, we headed back along the familiar trail. We saw how the taiga becomes higher, while snow-top mountains become further and further way. We still enjoyed to see once again the broad variety of flowers of different shapes and color, the paradise of botanists and artists. The green hills of nearby mountains were covered with soft layers of the Siberian pine-trees, and the scene was beautiful.

We felt that we were very lucky that we could see all this beauty. We felt very thankful to our excellent guides, who carried most of our stuff, cooked for us, and thus saved our strength for walking along the trail, and who really did all the best to make our travel safe, interesting and pleasant. It was a bit sad to return back. The clouds started to accumulate and few drops of rain fell on us, but during this trip we have seen different weather, and did not worry about the light rain. The clouds become deeper, and thunder started to go around nearby tops. We were retuning back. The strong rain started with flashes of lightening. The weather was crying with us, saying its last bye-bye.

In the evening, we reached the tourist base “Visotnik” and stayed there overnight. It was gray, raining weather. Some groups were only started on their travel to the mountains.

August 4-5

In the morning we start driving back. It was nice to have a car, so that we started to drive as soon as we could. We drove all day and part of the night. On the way we stopped several times, to have lunch, to buy the mountain honey (which has amazing smell of the variety of the Altai flowers), and bought some souvenirs. It was pleasant to have a car and to be in a small group, so that we could stop by when we wanted. We had an amazingly good dinner: we went to the market and bought different kind of the homemade food: boiled potatoes, solten (?) cucucumbers (don’t think that they are like those from the nearby groccery store! They are much tastier - not very salty, but has a harmony of different fresh spices), solten mashrooms, etc. We took all this to the bank of the Katun river, and enjoyed for the last time the beautiful views and this unusual dinner at side of nature.

We arrived to Barnaul, when it was very late: about 1 AM We went to the airport hotel and got very nice room. Sergey and Dima checked that everything was OK with our hotel. Unfortunately, it was time to part with our guides. We all felt that we become like relatives, and it was strange to depart, possibly forever. In reality, we so liked Altai, and our trip, that we plan to go these mountains again, possibly next summer, or may be in a year. There are so many other places at Altai which we would like to see.

We cannot imagine going with somebody else other than our guides.

Our short, 6 hours' sleep was very refreshing. We got to the airplane around 8 AM and had nice flight back. The airplane of the Siberian Airlines was very nice. Airport Domodedovo, where we arrived is a new, beautiful airport. We used comfortable Express train to Moscow. It was small but pleasant gift, that this one-hour deluxe train is free for those who use Siberian Airline.

We retuned back to Ithaca, USA, to start our usual life, which is mostly work on different interesting astrophysical problems. The days are similar and fly very fast. But we have a feeling that this wonderful 8-day trip to Altai Mountains gave us so much strength and beauty, such a strong positive “charge”, that we see things around us differently, as through the eyes of Nature, and thus we feel stronger, more creative, more patient and kind to others. We see beauty of the surrounding nature with full and open eyes, and this experience gives us an input of creativity which may help in our work, and anyway will keep us “in flight” throughout the year.

P.S. If you feel that you are tired of the standard routes and you want to see the most beautiful part of the Earth, then go to Altai. Our guids are strongly recommended.

Contact address: Dima Rudakov (tel. in Barnaul: 7-3852-236982). If you have any questions - then simply phone us: 1-(607) 272-6458 (h), 1-(607) 255-6915 (off)

Marina and Richard

Altai maps: