Unless you’re obsessed with our expedition (we’re cool with that) and spending hours researching (maybe you should get outside), you probably don’t know too much about the Djangart. Quite truthfully, we don’t either.
Hoping to put together an attractive grant application, we started looking for unclimbed peaks. I’m not sure who came up with Kyrgyzstan, but our imagination soon settled on an area known as the Western Kokshaal-Too. According to Garth Willis, “The Kokshaal-Too (“Forbidden Range”) is located on Kyrgyzstan’s Chinese border. It was a closed military region until the late 1990s, when the first Western expeditions visited the region. The Soviets had climbed the highest peaks, Dankova (5,982 meters) and Kizil Asker (5,842 meters), but the region as a whole had not been well explored by climbers. This will remain a region of unclimbed pearls for some years to come.” We dove in head first, looking through every American Alpine Journal from the past 15 years, compiling a database of all the expeditions, and crossing off peaks on the new map that exists for the area (Gamache/AAC). When we were done, we realized the Western Kokshaal-Too had become a popular destination rather than a mysterious anomaly.
Looking for something a bit more unexplored, we spotted a small note about the Djangart area on the webpage of the
Kyrgyz Alpine Club. When we plugged it into Google, we didn’t come up with much. Nice. Initially, the only report we found of activity in the region was a trip by Tony Whitehouse and Graham Sutton. In 2004 they helicoptered in, intent on climbing Pt.5318, the highest in the region. Having no prior knowledge of the area, the big walls, pesky moraine fields, broken glaciers, and a limited timeframe thwarted their attempt. Subsequently, they’ve been very helpful in giving us an idea of what to expect.
Reading this report, we sent an email to some logistics providers in Kyrgyzstan to get a price on a helicopter. When we got the news that it would be roughly 5,000 EUR, we thought we were out of luck. Then Googling skill prevailed once again and we dug up a report from a 2008 Russian expedition led by Vadim Kodysh. For a long time, this 60 page translated-via-Google document was our best window into the Djangart. I remember spending days trying to make sense of the translation and plotting their course in Google Maps. While they climbed a few peaks, their main objective was to complete a circuit through the range. Not knowing of Whitehouse and Sutton, they thought the only other visitors had been a Russian expedition in 1932. The report was indispensible, as it helped us develop an alternate approach using an off-road vehicle and horses. Members from the Russian expedition had also geo-tagged a handful of photos that showed up in Google Earth. With those and Google Earth terrain, we picked out a few objectives.
Fastforward three months. Interested in getting more info and photos to help guide us, we decided to take a shot in the dark and send an email to the address listed on the report. A few hours later, we had opened a huge door. Vadim responded and after a lengthy exchange of emails, we had over 200 photos of the region (see earlier post). After some more tedious work to place the photos on a map using the written report, we finally had our first good glimpse of the range. We quickly learned that Google Earth was horribly inaccurate; whole mountains were missing. The Soviet-era maps we had procured weren’t too much better. Thinking about it now, without the set of photos we would have been going in blind.
So, about the Djangart. It’s part of the Kokshaal-Too ridge that forms the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. It is slightly lower in elevation than the Enylchek to the northeast or Western Kokshaal-Too to the southwest, but still boasts at least a dozen peaks over 5,000 m, all but one of which are unclimbed. The weather is notoriously unstable, with great fluctuations in temperature and long periods of precipitation. We’re mentally prepared to be tentbound for several days.
The glaciers are retreating rapidly making for some arduous approaches over broken moraines. Due to the moderate elevation, aspect plays a large role in route type: south faces appear to be almost entirely rock, while north faces offer snow, ice, and mixed options. The rock varies from crumbly shale to marble to granite, with the best granite seemingly located on the highest peaks along the border in the most eastern sector of the region.
Access is possible via the military border posts at Karasay and Uch-Koshkon, up the Kayche river valley and over the 4200 m Djangart pass. We are hopeful that a 6WD Ural truck can make it all the way to the Djangart valley, but know that the river crossings have been difficult for previous expeditions. Alternatively, it is possible to arrange horses with a local hunter in the Kayche valley.
In a phone conversation, Graham Sutton expressed the wild and untamed nature of the region. That’s exactly what we wanted to hear. While it’s not the Karakoram, we’ve spotted some aesthetic lines. We’re excited to carve out our own little corner of the globe.
Mike
