Tuyuksu calls us

Their names are landmarks of Soviet, Kazakhstani and world mountaineering

Climbers keep in their archives memories of the time when they rushed to eternal snow and peaks, often noticing that there are picturesque foothills, green forests on the slopes, alpine meadows. There was one, but a fiery passion - climbing. Old photos. Digitized. The colors have faded, but the main thing is that people and mountains are recognizable.

In the Tuyuksu tract, where the mountaineering camp is now located, cars stood for many years, at the end of the week lights were lit in them, and everything that was brought from below was laid out on homemade tables. Early in the morning I had to find my shoes in a pile, put my backpack on my shoulders and go up at dawn.

The smallest car on weekends replaced the house Ural Usenov. This man was a living legend for young climbers, he often went to the memorial and stood for a long time at the stone, to which the largest tablet is attached. It contains eleven names of those who were killed by a storm on Victory in 1955. Of the 12 participants, one Usenov survived. After digging a cave in the snow with his friend Boris Sigitov all night and transferring people to it, torn apart by the storm and suddenly lost their will, he and Sigitov were sent down for help. Usenov survived overnight stays in the Arctic cold, he was bypassed by avalanches, and already below, on the glacier, he fell into a crack, where he lay for 26 hours. The comrades who left the base camp found traces broken at the crack and dropped the rope down. Ural Usenov outlived his friend Boris Sigitov by sixty years. Left without fingers, he spent his life training young climbers.

Years later, he spent evenings at a makeshift table in a wagon on Tuyuksu, the unflagging Gennady Durov. He worked in the Rescue Service of Almaty, and experienced climber and rescuer Sergey Samoilov for strength and endurance called Gena “a small combat elephant”. When in 2011 Denis Urubko offered him to go in the alpine style route to the peak of the Victory on the North wall, straightening the S-shaped path, which in 1982 passed the team 12 SKA SAVO and for a special configuration gave the name "Dollar", Durov did not hesitate. For the passage of the new route to the Victory, Denis Urubko and Gennady Durov were awarded the highest continental award - the Golden Icebreaker of Asia.

From the slope of Everest on April 18, 2014 came a huge avalanche. In the base camp, a shock wave blew away the tent of Durov and his comrade Yuri Kormazov. At this time, under the mountain was the crew of the film “Everest”, which the world will see later. We were looking forward to the release of the film because one of the characters in this story, which was then called the greatest tragedy on Everest, was Anatoly Bukreev. Permit was moved to the following year, but his best friend Murat Otepbayev went under Mount Everest instead of Gena. On March 16, 2015, Durov made a training climb to Oktyabrenok Peak in the Small Almaty Gorge together with a novice climber. He stopped communicating, and the rescue team went to the mountains. There was a car by the side of the road where the guys came, but it was empty. To carry out the search in the dark, rescuers divided into two groups, and after a while, Sasha Chechulin said on the radio that the guys found and there was nowhere to hurry. The wife of Gena Durov said that the men in his family left early, lived to 33 years. Gennady was 32 years old..

Ascent victims

Someone did not complete the ascent in the Trans-Ili Alatau, someone did not return from the expedition to the Pamir, the Central Tien Shan, the Caucasus, the Himalayas. On the trail leading to Everest, there is a stupa with a sign, where the names of Kazakhstanis and participants of our expeditions who died in the highest mountains of the world are inscribed. The first victims of the Himalayas were in 1990 climbers Zinnur Khalitov, Grigory Lunyakov and Murat Galiyev. They remained on the slope of the eight-thousander Manaslu. In 1997, when trying to climb Annapurna, an avalanche covered Anatoly Bukreev and Dmitry Sobolev. In 2010, Sergey Samoilov died in Lhotse.

We waited for the return of the team from the expedition to Manasla for the November holidays, and waited for the sad news. Young Galiev was the first to overcome a rocky section at an altitude of 7300-7400, to the end of which there was only one rope to pass, and then the bundle rolled down. Lunyakov and Khalitov as part of the second Soviet Himalayan expedition in the 89th passed the traverse of four eight thousand peaks of the Kanchenjunga massif, they were awarded the title of Honored Masters of Sports of the USSR. As part of the “Peace Expedition” to Everest from the north in the 90th Grigory Lunyakov climbed to the highest peak of the world without oxygen. And ten years before that, Khalitov and Lunyakov as part of a team led by Kazbek Valiyev overcame an incredible route along the center of the largest wall in the Union - the Southern Wall of Communism Peak. They were members of the legendary army team of champions Yervand Ilyinsky, who walked large walls in the high mountains. By the time of their death, Viktor Shkarban, who fell under a rockfall at the peak of Lithuania, and the best of the best climbers Vadim Smirnov, who fell at the peak of Lenin (Pamir), had already dropped out of the team.

Fast forward to the XXI century. In 2006, Denis Urubko and Sergey Samoilov of the old team of Ilyinsky were preparing for the first passage of the North-Eastern wall of the Himalayan eight-thousander Manaslu in the alpine style. Our film crew filmed a story about them, and the director asked Sergey why he was drawn to the mountains. "I feel very good there," Samoilov said. - I sleep well in the mountains. Nobody sleeps, but I sleep.” Now he sleeps eternally at the path leading to Mount Everest

They received for the passage of the new route “Golden ice pick of Asia”. In 2009, Sergey Samoilov wanted to finish his sports career with the traverse of the Lhotse-Everest peaks. This is an untrodden route, and up to an altitude of 7400, the routes to these peaks coincide. Samoilov was walking two ropes below the deuce of Zhumaev - Pivtsov. When they stopped talking, they turned back to find a friend. And they were in an avalanche. Maksut Zhumaev stopped hearing his breath, only felt a huge force carry it down. The avalanche pulsated and rolled waves. The rope wrapped around the leg, stretched the body, and then suddenly released from his arms. Vasily Pivtsova held the knot at the end of the rope. When they found the body of Sergei Samoilov, they realized that he also fell into an avalanche.

At the end of the season, all points are set

In August 2019, Murat Otepbayev, Alexander Chechulin and Andrei Korneev did not return from the traverse of the Victory peak on the Central Tien Shan. Bad weather caught the group at a high altitude. Everyone in the area received a warning about the impending storm, and climbers apparently hoped to sit out in the bad weather in the tent. In Almaty, reports of an approaching thunderstorm mean only that rain may spill somewhere over the gorges of the Trans-Ili Alatau, and in large mountains it is always snowfall with all the ensuing consequences. What? Snow masks ice cracks, wraps the slopes with a dense blanket, and then comes down in avalanches.

I'll give you excerpts from the NS chronicle. Alexander Chechulin fell ill on August 15. To save him, they decided to go down the route of Abalakov. During the descent, the group falls into an avalanche, part of the equipment is lost. Last contacted the base camp on August 16, Chechulin was no longer alive. Otepbayev and Korneev continued the descent, which in those weather conditions could take four days. As soon as the weather settled, on August 18, the search began from helicopters. Armed with thermal imaging and camera, our climbers flew on the Kazakh side. From the Kyrgyz side, I filmed in non-stop mode every section of the slope. And nothing. No bright spots, no leads.

I remember how at the border post between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan I met several friends who were traveling to Issyk-Kul at the end of the season. Someone reproachfully asked why they could not save the guys, because there are so many people and so much equipment in the mountains. Truly the earth is full of hearing, and the sofa experts are immersed in the topic better than the climbers themselves. If they could, they would, because for a few days this task was the main one and occupied the minds of hundreds of people in the city and in the mountains, and Denis Urubko answered my messages like this: “These were my friends, my people!” He tried to fly from Europe and go in search, but it was too late.

Mountains take what they want..

In order to understand the mountains, let me tell you a story. Kyrgyz pilot Shaimbek Karazakov told how he once landed a helicopter on a lintel between Chapaev and Khan Tengri peaks. He was saving a climber who broke his ribs. But a gust of wind turned the car over and it slid down the slope. They all survived, and another plane came after them. A few days later, the commission arrived, which was supposed to make a conclusion on the incident, and there was no helicopter. The mountain is hidden because the mountains live their lives, chew, swallow, spit out, and seem to endure human invasion with great difficulty. This is when in season on their slopes crowds craving to reach the peaks and someone loses on this path of life.

But, as the star of Soviet and Kazakh mountaineering Valery Khrischaty, who in conjunction with Kazbek Valiyev in 1982 as part of the first Soviet Himalayan expedition, climbed Mount Everest, if the mountains exist, someone must climb them.

Mountain climbers often face trouble that comes from above: snowfalls, stones, avalanches, landslides, landslides. A snow-ice collapse in the neck between Chapaev and Khan-Tengri peaks hit the group with which Valery Khrischaty worked in August 93. Then his friend Ilya Jodes disappeared with him. For three days, everyone who was on the South Inylchek glacier, in search of people, voluntarily dug trenches in that avalanche, being in the crosshairs of trouble that flies from above. Everyone chooses their own path, and for someone it is a vertical climb, a battle for the lives of friends, forever lost fingers. But up there, a pood of salt with a ligament partner is eaten in a matter of days, true friendship is born there, and false values fall like unnecessary husks.

Back to Tuyuksa. The famous artist Andrei Starkov, a close friend of Denis Urubko, was on the expedition of Anatoly Bukreev and Simone Moreau near Annapurna. I once asked, “If he had to write a film about Anatoly Bukreev, what would the finale be?” I would call the movie “The Return of Bukreev.” At Tuyuksa started the participants of the speed race. The day is cloudy, a fog swirls in the gorge, from which the figure of a high dry athlete arises. He has blonde hair, he slouches a little and looks like Tolya from afar, Andrey began to tell. “But it’s a different person, of course, but your heart is gone. Is the idea that life goes on? I ask. "Yes!"

More than once, the question was discussed that the memorial for history could contain tablets with the names of climbers who crossed the line not in the mountains. The names of such eminent masters as Ural Usenov, Boris Studenin, Yuri Golodov and others can tell a lot about the history of Soviet and Kazakh mountaineering.