Summit ascent in Turkestan ridge Kyrgyzstan.

“He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire” 

J R R Tolkien. «The Lord of the Rings».

Big wall climbing in Karavshin ridge.

The watershed of the Aksu and Karasu rivers, which are peaks 4810, 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus, Kotin, Asan, Usen, etc., is located in the northern spur of the Turkestan ridge. From the south, the Karasu gorge closes the Pyramidalny peak, 5503 meters above sea level, with powerful glaciers feeding the Karasu glacier and determining the microclimate in the gorge.
On the left orographic side of the Karasu gorge there are snow peaks with heights of up to 5300 meters above sea level, on the right is a whole system of peaks with heights from 4200 to 4900 meters above sea level, among which the Asan peaks and 4810 peaks stand out with their powerful monolithic sheer walls.
All peaks on this side have a slight snow cover and are composed mainly of granites. The development of the area by climbers began in 1980, when, within the framework of the USSR Championship, three routes of the 6th category were for the first time completed along the north-western face of Asan Peak, which is a complex kaleidoscope of rock difficulties.
In the same year, route 5 was completed in the category of difficulty along the western ridge of peak 4810. In 1987, teams from Leningrad and Odessa tried to climb the North-West face of peak 4810, but were forced to retreat due to severe weather conditions.
In subsequent years, the Northwest Face and the Eastern Face of Peak 4810 were ascended. The most difficult routes were covered by the Leningrad and Odessa teams. The routes of Moshnikov and Rusyaev are considered the most logical and expressive today on the North-Western Face.
One of the last striking events in the area is the first ascents in the summer of 1995 of Leningraders (A. Odintsov - I. Borikhin) of route 6 b, category of difficulty, along the center of the Eastern wall (diritissima) for 15 days.
In addition, in the Aksu gorge adjacent to Karasu, there are complex rock walls of peaks 3850 and Slesov, 4240 meters above sea level. On the walls of Slesov settlement, quite difficult interesting routes 6 a and 6 b of category of difficulty were passed.
Pyramidalny Peak, the highest point of the Turkestan ridge, is undoubtedly an untouched mountain (with the exception of the Leningraders' route along one of the central buttresses) with serious combined routes.
However, the shale that composes the mountain is badly damaged, which makes the routes to the peak potentially dangerous.

Authority:
Bryk Roman Alexandrovich. “Report on the ascent to the ASAN summit on the left side of the western wall 6 and the difficulty category A. Pogorelov route of the CSKA team Demchenko as part of the Moscow Mountaineering Championship ”. 2012.

Photos by
Alexander Petrov.