Expedition on mountain all-terrain vehicles in Tajikistan.

“... My eyes ... persistently looked south, enchanted by the grandeur of the panorama and the complete unknown that is there. But a massive snow ridge, like a wall, stretched in front of me at a distance of some 30 miles. At that time, I had not yet foreseen that these mountains would really become a wall for me, beyond which I would not see anything. I was in a hurry down to penetrate these mountains, and dreamed that I would reach the places where the natives' imagination places a "roof of the world" (Bam-i-dunea). Alas, I did not suspect that I was destined to confine myself to the orders of the Kyrgyz colonel to contemplate only the edge of the "roof of the world." Without sadness, I still can’t remember the disappointments that I had to experience in Alai. But what to do? It remains to be expected that if I do not see it myself, I will learn from others what lies behind these mountains”

A.P. Fedchenko. "Journey to Turkestan." M., 1950, p. 356.

Jeep safari in Zaalai ridge of Tajikistan.

Oktyabrsky Glacier is located in the Murgab district of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region on the southern slope of the Zaalai Range in Tajikistan. The length of the Oktyabrsky glacier is 19.0 kilometers, an area of ​​88.2 kilometers square.
The glacier is located at the junction of the Zaalai ridge with the Zulumart ridge in the upper reaches of the Koksay River, the basin of Lake Karakul. Its main stream descends from a height of 6600 - 6800 meters above sea level, from the steep southern slope of the Zaalaysky ridge to the very ridge, completely covered with firn and snow.
The food area consists of 6 wide cameras. The tongue throughout is broken by cracks; the lateral tributaries are also very fragmented. Well-defined middle moraines - their dark stripes are traced to the end of the glacier.
The moraine-free ice surface is covered in ablative landforms. The right tributaries flowing down from the eastern slope of the Zulumart ridge have narrow moraine tongues pressed by the main trunk to the right side of the valley.
The Uysu Dendritic Glacier is located east of the Oktyabrsky Glacier in the upper reaches of the Uysu river. Powerful streams of ice, fan-shaped, descending from the slopes of the ridge 6000 meters above sea level, are connected at the bottom of the valley into a common language with a width of about 1.5 kilometers.
Most of it is closed moraine. A steep, sometimes steep front of the glacial snout is located at an altitude of 4390 meters above sea level. To the west of the Oktyabrsky glacier, on the other side of the Zulumart ridge, from the southern slope of the Zaalai ridge, in the area of ​​Lenin peak, 4 large glaciers descend - Bolshoi Saukdara, Small Saukdara, Dzerzhinsky and Vali.
These glaciers have vast firn areas lying at high altitudes and narrow long snout. A feature of these glaciers is the periodic movement of their glacier snout, during which they descend into the floodplain of the Sauksai River and block it.
Geographical coordinates of Oktyabrsky Glacier: N39°20'48.52" E72°58'52.87"

Authority:
"Glaciers." L.D. Dolgushin, G.B. Osipova. Series "Nature of the world." Moscow, the publishing house "Thought". 1989.

Photos by
Alexander Petrov.