Kyrgyzstan Climbing Expedition with Fay Manners and Katie Keeley

On the 28th July 2024 we headed out to the Karavashin mountain range in Kyrgyzstan for one month of big wall climbing. Unfortunately we had a few difficulties from the off set, the first being that, due to personal circumstances, my original partner Alma Esteban had to pull out at the very last minute. Thankfully Fay Manners stepped in to join me so I could still go ahead with the trip. Our attempts to repeat some of the harder lines in the area, onsight, as an all female team were successful, such as the classic 800m Perestroika crack and the 900m Alperin route on Asan amongst several others. Our hopes to potentially establish a new line on one of the bigger faces was unfortunately not realised due to a combination of factors; one bag of climbing equipment not arriving on the plane, me getting ill with covid, some loose scary rock and very unstable weather in the second half of the trip. Regardless we had a very memorable adventure and gained some valuable life experiences along the way!

Many thanks to the Austrian Alpine club, The BMC and the Julie Tullis Memorial fund, and Mountain Equipment, without whom this expedition would not have been possible.

The Ak-su and Kara- su valleys, (meaning white water, and black water respectively), are located in the Karavashin, part of the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan.They are deep in the heart of the Pamir-Alai mountain range, straddling the borders of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Over the years the political climate in this area has been tense and at times dangerous, but currently it feels like a safe place to visit with little evidence of the ongoing conflict apart from the military checkpoint at the entrance to the valley and occasional soldiers with guns patrolling on the higher passes. This area is often referred to as the "Asian Patagonia," with its remote and wild landscape and towering granite peaks up to 5,500 meters.

We did extensive research on the geography of this area using Google Earth, Fat Maps, Russian Military maps and other literature from the Alpine Journal. We also consulted publications from the American Alpine Club, previous expedition trip reports from MEF and the BMC. We found the software on Avenza maps useful to plot the main features of the area and use GPS location without having phone signal.

Date of Ascent: 03-05 August 2024

Valley: Kara-Su

Length: 900m 22 pitches

Grade: 6C+

After a couple of days recovery, we decided to head up again, this time to tackle a route called Alperien, 900m of 6c+ trad, notorious for its wide cracks, starting on the east buttress. I am not well practised at wide cracks and off widths so knew this would be a challenge for me. 10 In the afternoon of the 3rd we began the long slog back up to the face of Asan, this time with significantly lighter packs since most of our gear was already up there. We set up our bivy and slept out under the stars in what turned out to be one of the most impressive meteor showers I have ever seen.

On the 4th August, we woke up at 5am and I lead us off for the first couple of pitches of easy climbing on good rock, through the first tricky corner and up to the base of the crack system. The first few pitches were hands and fists, gradually becoming wider as we gained height, but with lots of features. The rock was beautiful and compact with a clear line. The difficulties increased as we encountered smooth, slippery, slanting off widths and a wide unprotectable chimney system. The climbing was excellent and varied; flakes, stemming, double crack glory, small overhangs.

At pitch 9 I missed the ‘squeeze right under the overhanging bow of a ship’... Fay continued another 60m and had to build a creative belay on very poor rock. We realised we were off route, but decided to continue on as reversing the way we had come felt too dangerous, with many loose blocks for our ropes to pull down on our heads. We picked our own line up some booming flakes, I handed over to Fay who boldly quested up a broken chossy diagonal crack and traversed around the corner into the unknown, disappearing from view. To our delight two beautiful soaring crack lines rose above us; my lead 11 took us to the very end of the ropes with centimetres to spare.

The climbing was brilliant but got committing and a bit dirty towards the top going at around E4 6a. It was getting late now and we were not sure if this way we had chosen would actually get us to the top or not. We both keep climbing full 60m pitches with consistent difficulties around E1 but the rock is good and the line feels logical. Darkness falls and we keep moving, a traverse squeeze under a roof, wild climbing up steep flakes under the stars. Protected by our little bubble of light, it feels like we are the only people left in the world. Hauling is impossible here and the heavy pack weighs me down, along with the altitude. We have been awake and moving for 18 hours now.

At 11pm we decided to call it a day, we think we might be only a couple of pitches from the top but we are really fatigued and don’t know if we can bivy on the summit. We find a small, flatish ledge, spread the ropes beneath us for insulation and split our last protein bar. We both squeeze into the small foil bivy bag and spoon and shiver through the night, rocks bruising our hips and ribs. Weare extremely dehydrated at this point and both suffer violent muscle spasms through the night but somehow we are still laughing. As light dawned we dragged our stiff and aching bodies back up and I lead the final two steep pitches over the roof to the summit. I flop on to the ridge and into the sun! Glorious! It's still a 30 minute scramble up a very steep rocky ridge to reach the summit and I feel like a panting hippo. The views are incredible!

The slabs of 1000 years of Christianity bulging over to the east, the snowy peaks of Ak-su mountain in the distance and the dark foreboding face of Pik 4810 looming behind us. I was nervous about the way down as we had just a vague idea of the direction. We managed to locate the first abseil on the south side of the ridge and successfully abbed our way down to the shoulder. Then it all went horribly wrong. We chose the wrong gully and rappelled off into space. The gully was steep and incredibly chossy, with no signs that anyone had ever been there. We started building our own abseils on scary detached blocks, picking the most solid rock we could find, heart in mouth each time we pulled the ropes. Eventually after a rather harrowing 5 or 6 abseils we finally reached the valley floor and began a precarious downclimb on exposed slab, made more unnerving by the rain that suddenly arrived. A very cautious descent took us to a large boulder field where we began the 3 hour trek back into camp.

Date of Ascent: 8th - 9th August 2024

Valley: Kara-Su

Length: 900m, 18 pitches plus a scramble to summit

Grade: 7b+

Partly out of laziness (because we had descended off the opposite side of the mountain and all our sleeping kit was still at the base), we decided to head back up to the mighty Asan, this time to attempt an interesting sounding route on the left side of the face, with a bivy on the ledge ¾ of the way up. The first few pitches take you to the top of the ‘cucumber’ a semi detached pillar leading up to the main face. These offered brilliant wild feeling climbing, big flakes and lots of exposure, but on solid rock at an amenable grade. Once again we only has a vague line to follow and no description. The first couple of pitches on the main face were incredible. Brilliant face and corner climbing followed by a perfect 60m E4 finger crack. Then we hit a couple of pitches that involved some difficult sections aid climbing on micro nuts! We were under the impression that this route could be free climbed around 7b+ but these sections certainly felt much harder than that, with very tiny, awkward to place gear. One of the brass nuts popped in my face as I was pulling up and gave me a bit of a black eye.

It was draining both physically and mentally but on the whole the climbing was excellent. It was a little unnerving as we quested our way up this giant face, never quite sure what was coming next or if we were on a free line, an aid line or our own line! The final pitch was a long handcrack which turned into a wide chimney and a tenuous slab, making for an exciting finale as the darkness crept in. The ‘comfortable bivy ledge’ was in fact very narrow and rocky but we just about managed to squeeze ourselves into the gap and cook a hot meal whilst enjoying the latest showing of shooting stars on Sky TV. The next morning I felt pretty wrecked from a poor night sleep and trying very hard the day before. There were a couple of options off the ledge to do the final 5 pitches to the summit ridge but after some loose rock fall and overall fatigue we decided we didn’t need to stand on this summit again, happy with doing the best part of it the day before, we began our abseil descent down the face. Some belays were reasonable with a bolt or two and others looked fairly ancient but we managed the 12 abseils without incident and headed back on the now very familiar long walk down to camp carrying all of our bivy kit and bags from the past 3 expeditions!

Date of Ascent: 12th August 2024

Valley: Kara-Su

Length: 380m 10 pitches

Grade: 8a+/ E7

Our last day in Kara su and with more unstable weather forecast we opted again for a shorter, albeit harder line, with an abseil descent. This turned into a bit of a team ascent as a few of us wanted to try this line, which made it sociable although also involved a lot of waiting in the cold. I really loved the first crux pitch of this route, small finger crack laybacking in a corner, with some very creative body positions and a desperately building pump. I was really pleased on my flash attempt to only fall once and be able to quickly pull back on and make the rest of it clean. The next crux involved a wild traverse which I had to pendulum across then some very technical desperate feeling moves on small crimps which I managed to claw my way up. After doing all of the hard climbing, we were absolutely freezing, with a brutal icy wind that was battering us unrelentingly so we decided to head down and call it a day, happy to have pulled of some hard interesting climbing.

Date of Ascent: 14th-16th August 2024

Valley: Ak-Su

Length: 818m, 24 pitches

Grade: 7a+

It was our first day in the Ak-su valley and with increasingly small weather windows forecast we decided to get our kit together in the morning, do the horrible, steep slog up the boulder field to the base of the first small tower, climb the first 3 long, low angle pitches to get to the base of the main route and sleep at the col. Due to the nature of the terrain, hauling seemed like more hassle than it was worth so I decided to climb carrying the bag. Seconding with a haul bag on my back weighing two thirds of my body weight was a challenging experience but we made slow and steady progress and got to the col with time to spare and settle in for a cosy sunset. Our original plan had been to climb the whole route up and down in a single push 17from the col, but due to the impending rain we knew that this would not be possible, and in order to be successful we had to be strategic and break the route into sections.

So we were up at dawn on the morning of the 15th, the first pitch off the ground involves a few stiff moves with a tricky traverse and is a bit of a rude awakening as a warm up. After that there are several pitches of mind-blowingly perfect diagonal splitter hand cracks that just go on and on, at an easy enough grade that you can really just relax, get into the flow and just feel like your dancing up this beautiful face. Next comes some of the trickier pitches, an off-width that I managed to get away with laybacking completely and a then a wider wiggly squeeze to get out onto the Glasnost bivy ledge.

We reached this ledge just before 1 in the afternoon but with the clouds building and the forecast of heavy rain we decided to stay put here to increase our chances of making it to the summit. It turned out to be the right call as at 2pm the rains began, increasingly heavy, as we sheltered under our little tarp, squashed but dry, waiting for the worst to pass. It was a long time to stay curled up in that small space but I was glad to be there rather than slithering about on the wall. We knew the party behind us had bailed and we were worried for some friends who were higher up ahead of us. Around 4pm the rain stopped and the sun came out and we were able to bask in the glorious sunshine, watching the cloud inversions rising from the valley. The parties who had slept on the ledge began to return along with our friends, all of whom had to bail several pitches below the top when the rains came but were happy with doing the main part of the route. They continued on down and Fay and I were left to sleep on the ledge by ourselves which was fortunate because despite saying it slept 6 people up there I would argue it is very tight even with 4!

We had a fairly comfortable night on the ledge but when we woke the next day it was freezing cold with a strong wind that only built throughout the day. I started off wearing 4 layers and ended climbing in 7! The first pitch of the day is a burly offwidth that requires quite a fight in the morning and either excellent off-width technique or in my case sneaky face climbing on tiny holds! The 2 crux pitches are graded the same at 7a+, although the second one feels stiffer, but both are brilliant! A hand crack followed by tight fingers, up and over a funky roof that requires some creative thinking, into insecure flared cracks on the first crux. Then the second is a steep, small finger crack requiring some endurance followed by a very committing, exposed traverse on tiny crimps. As we finished this pitch it started spitting and the ominous black clouds were pressing in. It seemed to ease up so we pressed on, through a really tenuous and intimidating slab and up to the final ‘great corner’. Most of this was fairly straight forward climbing except for one rogue overhanging 6c fist crack. But the biggest challenge was the weather closing in and the bitter cold that we had endured the whole day.

We were exhilarated and relieved to finally make the final scramble up to the summit, with unimpeded views of the mountains across the whole valley. But that dark sky was pressing in and we hastily began our descent, concerned about all the 19stories we had heard about stuck ropes and aware that there was no one else behind us that might be able to help out. Slowly but surely we made our way back to the ledge with no major mishaps. It was totally dark at this point but we collected our sleeping kit and haul bags and continued picking our way down the abseils, praying to the rock gods not to get our ropes stuck. It seemed to work. We decided to sleep at the col as the thought of crossing that boulder field in the dark was really unappealing. However it may have been the wrong choice as that night turned out to be one of the windiest I have ever experienced. We were battered all night, with the wind tearing at our bivy bags and shaking us violently and unrelentingly so there was little sleep to be had!