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Home , Altai Mountains, Belukha Mountain, Biysk

Circling the Golden Mountains The Five Bridges of the Kara Koba

story & photographs by ZAND B. MARTIN THE BRIDGE WAS GONE. The Now open to the world, it is in peril as third bridge stood, repaired at some two twisted steel stringers were swept ironclad conservation practices and point with sawed telephone poles still parallel to the far shore, the planking community-based sustainable tourism sporting their wire hangers. On bridges sloughed into the current 15 feet below. and development have been unevenly four and five, the planks are gone, We stared in amazement at the forces adopted. Through Siberian , leaving only the bent, rusted girders on display and with a shrug laid down , , and , we groaning 15 feet above the rushing our bikes, retrieved a duffel of dry bread pedaled and skied our way across the current, and we engineered solutions and waxy Russian cheese, and sat beside border of winter and early spring and our mothers are encouraged not to our disappointment. explored this junction of , desert, ask us about. In nine hours of extreme The story of this bridgehead is and , one of the most unique and effort, we made eight kilometers. etched in the landscape. Avalanche pristine montane ecosystems on Earth. debris melts and deforms into Conservation across political snowfields along the valley bottom, and frontiers is a worldwide concern, and in the river channel the scraps and cuts here in the heart of we found a of ice-out and freshet mark the banks. vital laboratory. It is the northernmost This bridge, the second of five, was of the great mountain complexes lifted and smashed a year before — or that radiate north and east from the 10 or 50 — we have no way of knowing. collision of the The rusting box girders mix with old with , and its location, structure, snow and river gravel, the deck long and history have conspired to create since washed away. a tremendous, unmatched bio- and We spent days grinding uphill and ethnodiversity. It is a place of cultural postholing through thigh-deep snow and ecological convergence. to reach the valley of the Kara Koba The mountainsides dropped to the and in it discovered an abandoned, river in mixed meadow and taiga, and muddy, rutted track. Logs marked with we scouted the left bank, sure of our ax strokes cross bogland, and mud and forward momentum. In three hours of avalanche debris slowed us to a walk heavy lifting, we portaged along cliff as the old road rose and fell through bands and through snow, walking in forest and meadow. On a journey that at the river’s margin when required. The every turn threatened challenge, arrest, exhaustion, and hysterically contrarian conditions, the absence of the second bridge was no true surprise. Crossing this distant range was a fool’s journey as it has always been. We came here to circumnavigate the by bike and ski, and in this glaciated range at the northern edge of the vast endorheic basins of , we found a measure of challenge and wildness that cast our expectations in absurdity. With a pair of skis strapped to touring bicycles, we traced a 3,000-kilometer circle through four countries to better understand the range. Specifically, we wanted to explore how the arbitrary lines on the map have helped and hurt the lives of the Altai peoples and the conservation of their lands. This last refuge of snow leopards, Top: All manner of wildlife call the Altai home, including camels. story photographs nomads, and shamans is thought to be Middle: A rare hard-sided respite in the remote central Asian mountains. & the legendary location of Shangri-la. Bottom: Many bridges had been long-ago washed away, so finding one intact was a rare luxury. by ZAND B. MARTIN ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 21 This track, once a road, was built broke in 1917, this small work gang was crushed — again. Two kilometers of between 1915 and 1917 by Austro- surely caught in the middle. Were they switchbacks made up our descent to the Hungarian prisoners captured on the repatriated by Trotsky in time? Or did Kara Koba, depositing us on the floor of Eastern Front of the Great War. They they join the Czechslovak Legion in its the valley wet to the waist and covered toiled in these remote mountains at the long fight from to the Pacific in mud. Rolling out of the snowbound edge of the Russian Empire, thousands and race the nascent Red Army along forest, slush dropped from spokes of miles from the fighting. They cut the Trans-Siberian Railroad in armored and racks. We had moved into sun, this rough track through the mountains trains bound for Vladivostok and Allied leaving a postholed, pannier-plowed with shovel and pickaxe, rope and evacuation to America? No one knows. track behind. Returning that way was saw, bridging the Kara Koba five times A train of and Kazakh unmentionable. through its wild gorge. They connected herders passed us in the wilderness. I But our deliverance appeared right the valley of the , once the watched and waved from the cobbles, under our noses, and we jogged up to northern route on the great Silk Road, washing dishes from dinner with the twisted bridge to reconnoiter. Clear with China and the basin of the Black water from the stream. The men snowmelt ran below, wrapping rocks . waved, offered cigarettes, and plunged in foam and racing out of the gorge For their achievement, the track their horses into the swollen current upstream. Beyond the crossing, the is still called the Austrian Road. The in a race against daylight. An hour track zippered up the far pass and gave Czech, Slovak, Austrian, and Hungarian before, we had stood at the fifth and access to the Bukhtarma. Slowly, we prisoners who labored in this remote last bridgehead and watched the crawled out onto the two-inch metal wilderness left no trace save the track run out into space. Nearby a bars and between us slid bags, bikes, occasionally level path cut into the ford roared with the freshet, and we and skis along the girders with legs hillside and over these successive discussed our options for the crossing. dangling above the stream. The way passes and gorges. They worked and The creeping shadow line of evening seemed clear for that moment only, died as two empires collapsed around encouraged dinner, sleeping bags, and we were giddy that another puzzle them: their own and that of their and procrastination until morning. piece had reluctantly come to rest. captors. As the storm of revolution With no way across the river, we were We left China in storm and wind,

Above: The evening light leaves little doubt as to the origin of the Golden Mountains’ name. Opposite: Casting long shadows in the fading light of the Altai.

22 ADVENTURE CYCLIST augu s t/sep t ember 2015 ASIA Novosibirsk Reservoir

Novoaltaysk

Biysk

Ust’- Kamenogorsk SIBERIAN A L RUSSIA T A I

KAZAKHSTAN Lake M O Zaysan U Irt N Olgii ysh R T iv e MONGOLIA r A I N Altay S hoping our way would be smoother steeper than the famed Mt. Washington in Kazakhstan. Things did not start Autoroad in New Hampshire with CHINA well. We were held at the border for a worse surface condition. Beyond seven hours as Chinese officers looked the Mramorniy Pass, we rolled over 0 75 150 300 km Bulgan Soum through the photos on our cameras the “white pasture” of Akzhailau and 0 50 100 200 mi and the Kazakh guards asked us about ascended a second pass, Tikkabak, SWITZER TRAVIS Jessica Alba, our homes (“Please tell us where conifers appeared and we and shopkeepers who asked us about one thing your state is known for.”), and caught our first glimpse of mountains our route all nodded, some pointing our plans in their illustrious country. wreathed in snow. back the way we had come, saying the All this before they informed us that In this exertion, we worried about road disappeared if we went north our visas were fake and we could not our border permits. We had arranged far enough. Beyond the great lake of enter the country — Kazakhstan does for them to be processed in February, Markakol, a park ranger pulled his jeep not issue five-year visas to Americans. but our contacts had failed us over to tell us the Austrian Road would Except that they do. Once the spectacularly and had only informed us be impassible and we wouldn’t reach immigration office in Astana finished its a few days before we entered the border the Bukhtarma. When we insisted, he three-hour lunch break, they informed zone that we did not actually have smiled and wished us good luck. We had our erstwhile captors that the rules had permission to be there. Our afternoon found, so far on this trip, that everyone changed last year is nearly always wrong, and to let us go. and the only way to You would think THE PLANKS ARE GONE, LEAVING ONLY THE know what lay ahead knowing current BENT, RUSTED GIRDERS GROANING 15 FEET was to go and have a visa rules would be ABOVE THE RUSHING CURRENT, AND WE look for ourselves. If a top priority for ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS OUR MOTHERS ARE there were any grains border guards. of truth in their advice, We followed the ENCOURAGED NOT TO ASK US ABOUT. they would reveal border fence north. themselves. The wind hounded us The Austrian Road until the road turned to dirt and began cycling along the actual border fence was mud, rock, and snow. It rose against to climb. The thousand-foot dunes of was one of worry and uncertainty, but mountains finally considering spring the Ak Kum (“white sands”) desert as we climbed we committed ourselves in of wildflowers — European reflected bright sunshine behind, and as to this route. It would have added 700 globe-flowers and irises purple and usual the land gave no shade. We sweat, kilometers of rough desert road to yellow, ruthenica and bloudowii. and salty Rorschach lines grew on shirt go back and around the mountains. Snowfields beckoned above forest and hat as sandy gravel switchbacks With every checkpoint, police jeep, bands, but with such exhausting, slow turned desert to steppe, then to scrub and document request, we escaped days, our food would not last and and subalpine meadow. The air cooled unstopped, still — miraculously — fixed we were wary of what slow, grinding as the road climbed, rising 3,200 feet on our goal. The rangers, soldiers, hardship would present itself. The skis in under 10 kilometers, making it a bit police, schoolchildren, horsemen, stayed on the bikes in Kazakhstan, but

ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 23 we stopped from time to time to gaze up at the ridges still holding their snow, at the Sarymsaty (“Garlic”) Ridge, and onward to Burkitaul (“Eagle’s Eyrie”) and Aksubas (“Head of White Water”) Peaks. The land was stunning and utterly empty in that season. There was no one in the valley of the Kara Koba, the last mountain village nearly three days behind. We soaked in the green, white, and blue. The steppe worked us, but up high, despite the absurd physicality of the travel, we were revived. Cresting our last high point the next morning, we were confronted by the valley of the Bukhtarma. This was the Burkhatskiy Pass, and, along with the Tarbagatay Ridge, it marked the vague, shifting ecological boundary between and Central Asia. To the north, we Resupply options were few, so roadside repairs needed to be taken with care to preserve spares. saw Russia and Belukha, the great -clad peak at the heart of the a plastic bag in my hands flapping a on the map, and when what we expect Altai Mountains. Four thousand feet tih-tih-tih staccato around my thumb fails to appear, there was a feeling of below, the valley opened and we saw and forefinger. betrayal. When I showed a passing the arrow-straight asphalt ribbon that I was in a town that doesn’t exist Kazakh horseman the map and asked would connect us again with settled life. and on a road whose route is deviant for directions, he shook his head at from the world as known to Google the lines and road numbers. His reality Earth or our Hungarian cartographer. operated without grid lines, and a We make certain assumptions when In that barren stretch, we relied on sweeping wave covering 100 degrees looking at a map. It is a designed sparse settlements to restock. Beyond of the compass usually indicated the object, the recipient of refinement, the kilometer marker where our way. He wouldn’t get lost, but we might and bears a certain authority in its village should be, an empty valley of have. In the road signs are in geometry. But despite the weight of rock, sand, and scrub stretches to the Kazakh written in Arabic script, and accumulated knowledge they exhibit, horizon. This was our third phantom in Chinese, while numbers are in our maps are not infallible. The person village, and evening had begun to draw familiar Arabic numerals, and are our who designed our map of Xinjiang, or the curtain on our misfortune. The only tenuous connection. In Mongolia East Kazakhstan, lives, I believe, in road was not right, and the towns we there are no road signs. Budapest. I don’t think this person has expected for food and water did not Weeks before the Austrian Road, ever been to that lonely spot in Central exist. we found ourselves at a crossroads Asia, but they created a layered image We inescapably anchored our in Bayan-Ölgii aimag, the Kazakh- representing it that was eventually in perception of reality to what we see dominated province of western

24 ADVENTURE CYCLIST augu s t/sep t ember 2015 Mongolia. The main road from Ölgii runs southeast to Khovd and then traces a huge loop southwest through a low point where the Altai begins to taper into the Gobi. We saw a shortcut on the map: a thin, dotted line that ran due south and reached Bulgan soum and the Chinese border in half the distance. Already crunched for time due to the glacial pace of the Russian embassy, we rolled the dice and traded the known for a chance at speed and wildness. Instead of 800 kilometers on the main gravel road, we took compass bearings on the steppe and crossed mountain passes over rough tracks and pitted roads. These jeep tracks showed no sign of intention but instead wandered in a braid of 10 or 20 lanes where one jeep followed another and then bundled together over passes and rivers. With almost no information and the barest of navigation aids, we were taking a risk. We were passed by a handful of vehicles in five days, and only two dusty outposts with bare shelves marked the route. We ate ramen and carried water from one valley to the next, constantly fretting as bottles ran down and we went without. On a downhill run after crossing our last pass — the 3,000-meter Rashin Davaa — and no major obstacles remained between us and China, we rolled along the Buyant and Bulgan rivers. We were dry. I woke each day with cracked lips and swollen eyes, dust in every pore, and daydreams of trees, green grass, and water. Scraggly poplars appeared as we dropped, and mud brick houses and gers began to populate the the riverbanks. Rounding a bend, we rolled past a string of Bactrian camels laden with baggage, household goods, and the stove, poles, felt, and canvas of a packed ger. Women on horseback plodded along with them as horsemen maneuvered the flocks around the train. Bits of color trailed the lumbering beasts of burden. There were bright felted rugs in swirling dual-tone motifs and bits of scarf or jacket where a young child had been bundled. We rejoined the pavement and concluded our week-long shortcut

ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 25 as a sandstorm raged. The valley ethnic map, a story of pre-modern dissipated, the walls exploded apart, migration, imperial governance, and and the river was lost to sight. The resource scarcity. The word “Altai” mountains diminished and dunes means golden mountains in the appeared. We turned into sharp hills indigenous Turkic and Mongolian of gravel and sand and ground down languages, and this same meaning toward China. was carried into Chinese through The Altai is a fascinating cultural later contact. Turkic Kazakh peoples mosaic that tells, in its borders and inhabit the Mongolian and Xinjiang sections of the Altai, as well as northeastern Kazakhstan, having traveled there to escape the advance of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Tibetan Buddhism, the Russian Orthodox church, Islam, and Tengrist shamanism all exist here, and somewhere in each there is a reverence for this land — it is holy, magic. The four nations that share the Altai today view their portion as peripheral to the larger country and treat it as such. But this is a single despite the political frontiers. One of the key debates in the over the last few years has been an energy transport agreement between Gazprom, a Russian natural Top: Road conditions in the sparsely populated Altai varied wildly, from asphalt to nothing at all. gas company, and CNPC, the China Middle: Enjoying the cuisine and hospitality of locals in the remote steppe. National Petroleum Corporation, to Bottom: Wind was a constant presence in the often-treeless terrain. explore the construction of a pipeline

26 ADVENTURE CYCLIST augu s t/sep t ember 2015 through the heart of the UNESCO- designated “Golden Mountains of Altai.” The only feasible route for this pipeline goes over a high mountain pass in a seismically active area, and the project only has an estimated 30-year lifespan. The impacts on the and the region, arguably the twin hearts of the area, could be substantial. Gazprom recently postponed the pipeline to at least 2016 but has not abandoned plans to pursue it. After 50 days of snow, sunshine, mud, and dust, we rolled into Samarskoje, East Kazakhstan, late The Altai A conservation challenge on a May afternoon. The police met us at the village limits in a battered Despite being a single biodiversity in the Altai, and the area a key climate Toyota Corolla and escorted us along a geologic and biotic entity, efforts to protect certain refugium. The low-elevation the Altai is split between species or ecosystems temperate-zone in flag-draped main street to the station, four countries. Until quite necessarily affect industry the Altai are at about the and our ending. We had begged the recently, the periphery of the and energy policy. The story same latitude as London state police, army, park rangers, and People’s Republic of China of how these projects impact and Vancouver, making them immigration officers in a half-dozen and the former Soviet Bloc the landscape and the people ideal markers of a changing towns to register our visas, all without was off-limits­ to foreigners success. Now we were “in violation of and hidden from the rest administrative registration protocols” of the world. Now, four and were led into a crumbling edifice nation-states share the and through doors that only cash Altai, and in this land riven would eventually re-open. by international borders, There, in that chipped, ignominious transboundary conservation efforts have struggled to gain brick and concrete shoebox, we traction. The Altai is home to found the end of our journey. We several threatened Central were stymied in our goal to reach the Asian species including the railhead at Ust Kamenogorsk, so we , , ended in custody, in Samarskoje, at the and , as well edge of the hills that rise eastward and as globally non-threatened become the Altai. fauna that are nonetheless of the Altai is a highly trans- climate. Indeed, the 1,030 noteworthy indicator species, ferable one, as similar narra- glaciers in the Russian Altai Zand B. Martin is an explorer, teacher, and writer. including , , tives are enacted around the have lost between 9 to 27 His first bike trip, Silk Road in Winter, took him and brown bears. Energy world. The Altai Mountains percent of their total area from Istanbul to Kazakhstan through occasionally policy and climate impacts also sit on a sensitive conver- and 12 to 24 percent of their unfortunate weather. You can read more about his tell the story of changing gence of bioregions, making total volume since 1952. travels at zandmartin.com.

September 25*-27 Sharonville Convention Center – Cincinnati, Ohio Does your sense of cycling adventure include wheeling solo and self- Bicycle Tour supported through wild mountain passes? Perhaps a more sedate, guided tour of a region’s wine country, or maybe a weekend century or local & Travel Expo charity ride? You’ll find a convention floor filled with exciting exhibits show casing tours, travel destinations, bikes and equipment, and you won’t want to miss the Outdoor Demo Riding Arena to try out the latest travel and touring bikes. Entertaining and informational seminars covering all aspects of bicycle touring and travel help make this a “don’t miss” cycling event on your 2015 calendar. Register now! www.bicycletourandtravelexpo.com *Industry Only Friday, September 25

Bicycle Tour and Travel Expo_quarter page_4C.indd 1 3/18/2015 3:19:52 PM ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 27