Today I’m taking a virtual trip back to Tian Shan mountains. I like the contrast between alpine flowers and mid summer snow. Snow was fairly dirty by this time and we didn’t play snowballs, and fortunately my daughter didn’t try to eat it. She likes to taste fresh snow, you know, one of those things our kids like to do, just I used to eat some as well.
Did you know that Almaty, Kazakhstan was a host to the Asian Winter Games this winter?
I was there about six month ago and took a few pictures on the side walls, I call them Chimbulak Murals. Chimbulak is the name of the winter ski resort, if you were wondering about that strange name. I wonder if any of these murals are still there. Probably not, to shame.
Its been a while since I shared photos from Tian Shan mountains. Last summer we spend a few days in Almaty, Kazakhstan and on one of those days we went to hike at Chimbulak ski resort. Thankfully, they had one of the lifts operating and it took us all the way up into the high mountains. From there we hiked for another 45-60 minutes to places were most locals do not go. Hiking there is not the easiest, because you are pretty much at the top of these picks, the slopes are super steep, there are a lot of drop offs and the rock is loose and with sharp edges. At one point I slipped and cut my leg on one of those sharp rocks. It is so high, there is still snow laying on the ground. On top of all this, green hills are covered with bright little alpine flowers. Amazing. So here is one of the photos from that day.
Maybe it is Russian, might even be from some other country. Doesn’t have any markings on it. Bulldozing Tian Shan mountains.
On our way to lake Issik we stopped at the observation tower. This tower is about 50 meters high, maybe more. It is actually was a bit scary to climb up the top and going down. The stair cases were fairly steep and on one side there were no bars to keep you safe. So you’d climb a stair, walk across, climb a stair, walk across – and here you’d hold to the inside rail, because just 3 feet away is an opening, no bars, and it is really high. But the view from above is pretty cool and totally worth the trouble of getting up there.
This photo was taken south west facing, into the mountains. Lake Issik is somewhere there a few miles away. As you can see, river is very rocky, and rock slides are all over. You won’t see huge boulders, these rocks break apart into smaller ones. Do not ever try to hike into those rocks, extremely dangerous, they will slide under your feet and can actually start a mini avalanche, just enough to do some serious damage to your body.