On the «Roof of the World». The pass of the Zaporizhzhia romantics appeared in the Pamirs

A group of Zaporizhzhia conquered one of the world’s seven thousandths — Lenin peak on the Pamir mountain system. During the 27-day campaign, five of our guys managed to make the first ascent of the pass, named the «pass of the Zaporozhian Romantics», open a new route for climbing Obruchev Peak, overcome eight difficult passes and walk 160 kilometers through the snow of the highlands.

The difficult path lay through stormy mountain rivers, ice cracks hidden by snow, icefalls and impregnable rocks. All this under the strongest gusts of wind and temperature drops that drop to 25 degrees below zero at night.

So, today we will tell how it is — to visit the «Roof of the World» and will descend with her alive and victorious.

Composition of the group

Head — Ihor Deribas, 32 years old. Participants: Stanislav Ovchinnikov, 24 years old; Anton Zemlyanoy, 35 years old; Anton Borovyk, 31 hours; Ihor Papyshev, 37 years old.

One year for preparation

Preparation for a hike of such high complexity category takes about a year. After all, they are not flying to Egypt. It is important not only to find suitable participants, but also to prepare them for grueling physical exertion. Plan a route, find descriptions of passes with the most optimal approaches, choose the necessary equipment. It will take several months to dry the required amount of meat, vegetables, and fruits for 27 days.

Taking all of this into account, Ihor Deribas shared the idea of ​​conducting a difficult hike in the Pamirs with potential participants in the fall of 2013. Later, when the route was determined, an application was made at the Zaporizhzhia Route Qualification Commission (MKK).

Mountain hikes of the fifth category of complexity Zaporizhzhia MKK rarely releases — one group of ambitious daredevils is recruited once every few years, and even these units rarely reach the declared finish line.

That is why the journalists «Verge» asked Serhii Nekrasov, the president of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Federation of Sports Tourism, whether he had fears and anxieties when he registered the hike for the children, because the group leader — quite a young guy, and the participants are of the same sex.

— I’ll be honest: I wasn’t afraid. Ihor is not just one of the youngest, he is one of the most promising guys in Zaporizhzhia mountain tourism. More than one trip to the mountains of the Caucasus, to the Tien-Shan and the Pamirs is behind his shoulders. In addition, this group has a very strong composition of participants: all the guys are seasoned, experienced, and in mountain tourism this, without exaggeration, plays a decisive role, because the well-being, and sometimes the life of the entire group, depends on the actions of one person, — Serhii Nekrasov shares his thoughts.

According to the president of the federation, in the Zaporizhzhia region, you can list on the fingers of one hand those who are really capable of conducting hikes of the highest categories of complexity, and Ihor Deribas is one of them. For example, during all the years of independent Ukraine, only two Zaporozhians became masters of sports in mountain tourism (for this, two hikes of the fifth category of complexity are necessary), and Ihor has every chance to enter this elite.

Since the end of autumn, the participants of the campaign have started active training: two or three times a week, a cross-country with a length of 10 to 15 kilometers, on weekends — technical training. In the winter, we went to Krym together to improve the psychological climate in the group.

However, with the approach of X-hour, the campaign was twice almost under the threat of failure. At first, it was assumed that there would be one more participant in the group — girl But literally on the eve of the trip, due to unforeseen circumstances, she had to refuse participation. Then, two days before departure, it turned out that the flight was to Dnepropetrovsk — Moscow was cancelled. In order to catch my flight to Moscow — Osh (Kyrgyzstan), I had to urgently buy train tickets. A minibus, ordered the day before, was already waiting for the Zaporozhians in Osh, which took them to the starting point — border crossing point near Bordobe Mountain, which translates as «White Mountain».

The guys left a drop of food with the border guards for the second round of the campaign. According to the route, they had to make a nine-day trip to the region, return, take the remaining provisions and move further into the mountains. At the start of the first round, each participant’s backpack weighed almost 27 kilograms. At the start of the second — about 35.

What will the pass be called?

On the first day of the campaign, the Zaporizhzhia tourists encountered an obstacle — Janaidartaka mountain river. Narrow bubbling brown-brown streams roll huge boulders with unimaginable speed, and a tourist, even with the heaviest backpack, for such a «stream» — a chip If the place of the ford is chosen incorrectly — too narrow or deep, — to get out of these tenacious embraces alive and unharmed is great luck. And injuries — not a very good start to the 27-day hike.

— Back in Zaporizhzhia, we searched for a description of this river, but nowhere could we find its depth or a convenient place for wading, only satellite photos. After that, the place for the transition was chosen at our discretion, where, as it seemed to us, the spill was the widest. Passed into the pre-dawn hours, until the streams flowing from under the glacier gained full strength, — Anton Borovyk explains the situation.

Further, passing along the wide valley of the Kattaaryk rivers and the already known Janaidartaki, our tourists began the approach to the first nameless pass, the height of which is 4,330 meters. It will later be called the pass of the Zaporozhian Romantics.

— The name was probably invented in Zaporizhzhia? — I’m asking guys.

— No, such things are not invented at home, — Ihor Deribas, the manager, is in charge. — The difficulty of the first pass is that we don’t know whether it will be possible to climb or not. We counted only on satellite images and luck. As they climbed, they built a tour (a hill made of stones, — author) and began to come up with a name to write a note (notes are left by tourists when passing the pass, the next group takes pictures of them and thus confirms their passage of this obstacle, — author). The wind, as I remember now, knocked me off my feet. At first, they wanted to name the pass «Rainy»: on the approaches to the pass, we were drenched with rain, but then we settled on «Zaporozhsky Romantics».

Meetings in the mountains

Another achievement of the Zaporozhians — traverse-first pass along the new road to Obruchev peak, from north to south. In this area, the Zaporozhians met a group of Lithuanian tourists — eight people As it turned out later, they had just completed the rescue work: their leader had fallen into a deep crevasse in the glacier. The only thing that saved us was that we walked in a pack. The group members managed to react in time and secure the rope, preventing the man from falling deeply. But the backpack had to be unfastened, so it, they say, flew thirty meters into a crack. But I managed to get him later. However, the Lithuanians coped with this unpleasantness with dignity and did not lose their fighting spirit: at a general dinner, the Zaporozhians were treated to sweets and sang several songs to the guitar, which was carried along with an ice ax and a rope by one of the participants.

One of the memorable moments of the campaign — descent through the canyon to the Korzhenevsky glacier. When they got to the place of descent, it was getting close to lunch. The glacier was actively melting under the rays of the sun, and its muddy streams flowed down the exposed rocks, flowed into the sleeves, necks, and boots of the tourists descending on the ropes. In such conditions, the guys spent about five hours.

However, a pleasant meeting awaited them in the valley: the family of a local shepherd stayed in a yurt there, and they took their horses out to graze. They invited the Zaporozhians to share lunch with him and treated them to real koumiss (a fermented milk drink made from horse milk).

— Amazing people live there — calm, leisurely, very friendly. In the Alai valley, we met an elderly man, he was carrying cans of water, 5-7 liters each. It was several kilometers to the spring, and we were completely off track. Then he offered to drink from his can. Just think: he dragged so much and just entertained five unfamiliar men who came down from the mountains and clearly drank more than a couple of sips out of courtesy, — Anton Zemlyana shares his impressions.

Notes from the past

The second round of the campaign of the Zaporizhzhia ran through the eastern part of the Zaalai ridge, only on the snowy peaks of which they traversed for five days. In these places, tourists do not appear often, and the passes here are among the most technically difficult. So, on one of the passes, the guys had to pull 13 ropes (each 50 meters long), and among the obstacles on the way there were four icefalls and TurkVO peak (height 6,264 meters). By the way, the Zaporozhians became the third group that managed to climb this peak. There they took the note of Tomsk tourists, who in 2007, under the leadership of Mykhailo Vorozhishchev, took the note of the pioneers of 1956.

Further, on the Zotov pass, the guys took a note of the famous Moscow athlete of international class Andrii Lebedev, who passed this route in 2008. Here the Muscovites left a dump with food, but for some reason she never returned for it. Canned foods, cereals, sweets were found in the bag with provisions.

— It’s a pity, you don’t want a person at the top, — sighs Stas Ovchinnikov. — Due to mountain sickness, it is not good at all. Somehow they woke up, the guys started preparing breakfast, and I looked at them and couldn’t understand what language they were speaking. And so all morning. Because of the altitude, you feel unwell all the time, mountain sickness did not completely go away until the end of the hike, and its symptoms constantly returned when climbing.

On top of the world

The highest point of the Zaalai Ridge — Lenin peak, the height of which is 7,134 meters. It is located on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Climbing this seven-thousander became the final stage of the Zaporozhian campaign.

— When we arrived in the area of ​​Lenin peak, we met a group of climbers. They sat under the peak for three weeks, underwent acclimatization, and then bad weather — no chance to take. We went back down with nothing. Then we came to the base camp without a particular mood. But in the morning the situation changed: the visibility improved, the clouds disappeared. The Heavenly Chancellery gave the go-ahead to try their strength, — recalls Anton Zemlyanoy.

To the top — three intermediate camps, in each of them an overnight stay. The exit from the third camp, which is located at an altitude of 6,100 meters, for the ascent to the top, the Zaporozhians began at five in the morning, and climbed — by three in the afternoon. Then — five hours of descent back to the camp.

— In such conditions, you walk like a robot, no thoughts in your head. You take a step, rest, then more and more… and so I kiss eternity, — Anton shares his impressions.

The general impression of the guys from climbing the seven-thousander is strong, but not bright or at least colorful. Yes and from where: all around is snow and stones for days, yes что дней — weeks!

In my opinion, journalist John Krakauer described the most comprehensive impression of having climbed the highest peaks of the planet in the book «In Thin Air»: «Standing on top of the world, one foot in China, the other in Nepal, I scraped the ice off my oxygen mask, turned my shoulder to the wind and gazed distractedly at the community of Tibet.» On some obscure, fragmentary level, I understood that the expanse of the earth, stretching out under my feet, was a truly breathtaking sight. For many months I dreamed of this moment and foresaw the explosion of feelings that must accompany it. But now, when I finally and really found myself on the top of Everest, I had absolutely no energy for emotions.

This is such a paradox.