October 16, 2025
Tag Archives: altai
October 14, 2025
Rushing down the Akkem Rush (the crown jewels of the Katun).
We finally made it to the main water “attraction” of the Katun: the Akkem Rush, aka the Akkem Breakthrough, aka the Pipe. Long ago, the Katun carved out a gorge about 12 kilometers long right here, squeezing the river down to just 30 meters wide. The result: all that water rushes forward with tremendous force…
October 13, 2025
A week on the “Lazy Katun”: 200km+ of river-meditation and sun!
After shooting through the Katun’s Cheeks, we had another two weeks (!) of assorted rafting ahead – “assorted” as in: some lazy stretches, some bursts of action, and the occasional bout of nerve-wracking whitewater rapidding. But the five days after the Cheeks were all one thing: lazy. We even call this stretch the “lazy Katun“. Around 200 kilometers of gentle current, ripples and pools, and only a handful of small rapids. All in all – smooth sailing: the perfect setting for quiet reflection and meditation. Andf if the weather’s nice the mind totally resets.
September 26, 2025
Katun-rafting – day two: the “Cheeks” rapids of the Katun.
And here we are again – back in the Altai Mountains for our second day of rafting down the Katun.
While the first day was pretty calm (therefore an excellent warm-up day for the rafting-newbies among us), on this day we hit the Katun’s first real rapids. They’re called Shyokki – the “Cheeks” because… apparently the “river is squeezed here by sheer cliffs”. I never fully understood that, but whatever; the main thing – they’re rapids (several of them), and look good ) ->
These are still the very upper reaches of the Katun, but the river’s already quite fast-flowing (and still milky) ->
September 24, 2025
“Everybody was Katun rafting” – day one.
So, why the Katun? Why do I raft down it so often?…
Well, it’s simply the most interesting river you can raft down as a non-professional – as long as you’re guided by experienced pros (and ours weren’t just pros – they were Russian rafting champions: how about that?!). But, what do I mean by “interesting”?…
First, the sheer force of the water here is unusual, the rapids and riffles are fantastic, and the flow-waves you encounter here sometimes reach what seemed to us like 2–3 meters high!
Second, the river is relatively safe. There are no whirlpools where you can get spun around forever and all the rapids are passable. There aren’t any dangerous rocks you could get pinned against forever, and no other surprises either. Well, unless you’re in the very upper reaches, where you might end up under a tree hanging over the water; and one of the lower rapids in high water becomes a pretty scary – and dangerous – obstacle. But we’ll get to that…
Third, it’s one of the longest rivers there is for truly active whitewater rafting: from the upper reaches of the Katun all the way down to its lowest rapids you can paddle unhindered (without having to portage around dams or weirs) for more than 500 kilometers. Five hundred-plus kilometers of fast-flowing water – woah! And the total drop in elevation is over a kilometer. Oh my gradient!
So, for me, the Katun is the most… luxurious river I’ve ever rafted. Some real experts even told us that the best rivers for commercial rafting are the Katun, the Zambezi (I can confirm that: it looked real fierce from above), the Colorado, and Chile’s BioBio.
September 23, 2025
Altai-2025: a bird’s-eye view.
Having completed the hiking leg of our summer vacation, we really wanted to take a last good look at the mountain scenery from a bit higher up – like, for example, from a helicopter window. But since we couldn’t check out everything that way, we instead had our drone take flight for a look around from up there. And the results are great! But of course they were; drone-pilot-extraordinaire DZ was at the controls! ->
Buttes at the crests of ridges. By the way, you can roughly see the direction of our route here: along (or near) the ridges. And notice how the terrain is quite gentle here – very few steep ups and downs ->
September 19, 2025
The multicolored Yarlu valley, and a tough trek to a glacier.
A walk through the Yarlu River valley is an absolute must if you ever find yourself at Lake Akkem. The valley is unique in two ways: first, there’s some kind of crazy underground magnetism/energy here (which I mentioned in yesterday’s post), which makes you feel just great. Second, the colors of the mountains here are sublimely beautiful – just fantastic:
The valley is approximately three kilometers (along the trail) from the Akkem River and Lake Akkem – here:
September 18, 2025
Altai-2025: marching on together
Having arrived at the start-point of our hiking-rafting adventure it was time we got this show on the road path. The mission for the day: climb up to the ridge we’ll be hiking along the top of. The weather was perfect, which meant the views up top promised to be simply magical…
No need to hurry – the distance this day was pretty short, so we had a leisurely breakfast. Then we crossed the bridge over the Akkem and set off on the hiking part of our route.
September 16, 2025
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.
July 29, 2025
Krasnoyarsk and onward!
It’s been quiet on this here blog of mine of late (sorry for that), but my schedule’s been as full as a Rastafarian’s head of hair. So what have I been up to?…
Well, last Monday, Moi & Co. got on a plane and flew east. And ever since it’s been just four or five hours’ sleep of a night in hotels, a lot of helicopter rides, a zillion photos, and a crazy quantity of impressions. All of which I’ll eventually be imparting to you sooner or later here. And one particular thing I’ll be telling you about later is the food. Yes – that’s something I rarely do, but when I do, it means something culinarily very special occurred. Spoiler: we came up with the phrase “aggressive hospitality”, which stands for tons of food (waaay too much) – and copious quantities of drinks too. (Two other new terms we invented in Krasnoyarsk: “punitive cuisine” and “gastro-extremism”.) But all in due course…
Our Krasnoyarsk (here, in Siberia) stay was simply awesome, and, like I say – more on it later. Meanwhile, I’m already somewhere else in Siberia – on a bank of one of its great rivers…
…And from now on and for the next 25 days there’ll be little internet time for us (if there’s any internet at all), so my tales from the Siberian side will only start appearing here mid-August.
A brief glimpse of Krasnoyarsk: