Altai-2025 hiking & rafting – the beginning.

All right folks – here we go: finally, my series of posts on our Altai summer vacation begins!…

Now, as everyone knows only too well, backpacking across mountains and valleys is always a good idea. But to do so far away from civilization over five days (or even a week or two) isn’t just good, it’s exceedingly good – especially if the route is surrounded by OMG-beautiful views and assorted unusualnesses. I once even compiled a short list of such amazing best-in-the-world mountain-and-valley treks – here. Well that list needs a +1 for sure – and it’s well overdue: the tracks/paths across the Altai Mountains…

I’ve hiked around here on two routes: between Tyungur village and Akkem Lake (in 2016), and between Belyashi and the same Akkem Lake along the Argut river  (in the summer of covid-stricken 2020). The latter was wonderful; but since it rained for several days in 2016 and we didn’t get to see any beautiful views on that route whatsoever, we decided to do a second pass this year – and we don’t regret it at all!…

You can get to Akkem Lake via different routes; we chose not the shortest but probably the most contemplative (in good weather). In total we walked around 45km, but with ups and downs of more than two thousand meters. We completed it in go-slow mode over four days. It’s generally not the most difficult of treks, but office plankton does need to put in at least some pre-training beforehand.

The track’s quite well-trodden and mostly horizontal – with the exception of the first and last days. The path goes along a mountain ridge, so (logically) where the ridge goes the path goes – so no going up steep mountainsides between ridges. Only on the first day do you need to climb up to the ridge (1200m along the vertical), and on the last day you need to descend 700 meters down to the Tekelyu river and then ascend another 700 meters the other side:

And this is how we trekked all four days:

And at the end – magnificent views of the mountains, Akkem Lake, and the multicolored Yarlu valley:

I’ll be telling you all about our trek in detail – in case someone wants to have a go at it themselves. It’s best to do it with professional guides (we normally go with the company Altai Guide), but here, as mentioned, the track isn’t difficult at all, so you can do it on your own.

Almost all routes to Akkem Lake and Belukha Mountain start from the village of Tyungur. So the first segment of the journey is getting there from the airport at Gorno-Altaisk. It’s not too far – just 370km – but the roads there are partially unpaved, and if there are stops, it takes at least seven hours.

What’s changed noticeably here in a few years – the number of vehicles on the roads has increased several-fold! ->

But that’s only near Gorno-Altaisk, where the main recreation centers are located. Then the Chui highway is quite quiet – and also beautiful:

When it was time to turn off the main road… surprise! Noticeably more asphalt! ->

But not everywhere…

Gas station equipment is rather cyber-modern: without a user manual you don’t know how to pay (at least the first time) ->

Traditional obstacles on the road – sheep, horses, cows:

And there’s the Katun! ->

We’d return here by river in precisely two weeks:

We arrive in Tyungur. Here you can stay in nice guest houses (we weren’t to have such civilized conditions until the end of our journey). The guest houses even had Wi-Fi (we’d be without internet for 10 days) ->

There are several ways to get from Tyungur to the Akkem River (where we start on foot). We chose the simplest one – on the back of a forever-reliable old off-road military GAZ-66:

And off we popped – on to adventure! ->

But first – a stop at the store, because the next time we’ll have such luxuries will only be in ten days…

Stock up! :-)

Done! Including ice cream and beer!

The good thing about the beer: it lasted longer than the ice cream!

Let’s go!

All good on the back!

Already good views:

Woah – traffic! Tourism really is on the up here…

Oops:

Maybe one day there’ll be asphalt and cafes on the pass…

We get to the Akkem. This place is about 8km from the confluence of the Akkem and Katun.

There are different routes here: 1) with a full load (you carry everything in your backpack); 2) on foot with the minimum of necessary things for the day, and the main cargo is carried by… horses; 3) all together – both tourists and cargo – goes on horseback! We chose the second option, and here are our rides! ->

The river’s not wide, but very stormy. Altai for sure! ->

And this is how we lived for the next three weeks. Some places weren’t too bad, others not so great…

We were to cross this bridge to the other side of the Akkem to begin our hike ->

But before you hike you need to eat! ->

That’s all for today folks. Back soon with more of Altai-2025!…