High Achievement Awards

You can name many more worthy athletes, but awards do not find everyone. So congratulations to the awardees. They deserve it! All participated in Himalayan expeditions and made ascents of eight thousand.

In a bundle

Mountains bring people together and mountains bring them together. You quickly know if you have a margin of safety. You're quick on your partner. What can be hidden for years on the plain becomes apparent. There are areas of life where everything is in the palm of your hand: polar expeditions, submarines, mountaineering. After experiencing trials together, some remain lifelong friends, no matter how she pulls them in different directions.

Nowadays, there is an active development of commercial mountaineering. It became fashionable to record rails and podcasts with the participation of masters who passed the Soviet school. Together with Outdoor Center Almaty, a specialized and expert center of equipment for mountaineering, mountain tourism and outdoor recreation, we are conducting a media project about the history of Kazakhstan mountaineering. The network posted interviews with such legends as Kazbek Valiyev, Rinat Khaibullin, Vladimir Suvig, Boris Dedeshko. They talk not so much about themselves as about those who were there on expeditions.

In history, the names of climbers whose ligaments can be considered inseparable have been preserved. For example, Valery Khrischaty and Kazbek Valiyev, Vasily Pivtsov and Maksut Zhumaev, Boris Dedeshko and Denis Urubko. Let's talk about one of those bundles.

Boris Dedeshko is the winner of the world “Golden Icebreaker” (Piolets d’Or, or “Oscar of Mountaineering”), which he received together with Denis Urubko for the first pass to Cho-Oyu peak in the Himalayas in 2009. This is the highest award in mountaineering, and when Denis, who moved to Europe, came to Almaty in 2024, friends who met him were photographed with an ice pick in their hands against the background of the mountain landscapes of the famous artist Andrei Starkov.

In 2009, Andrey and I were waiting for the end of the expedition to Cho-Oya and the message on the pager. The control period has passed, the excitement is growing. Denis told the Nepalese accompanying them to leave the base camp if they did not come down at the specified time. The cook and his assistant did not leave. They waited for climbers, and I finally had a vibrating pager. Urubko wrote that he and Boris returned to the camp. The mountain!

And shortly before his message, Andrei Starkov called and said with alarm in his voice that a black tropical butterfly sat in his hand in the center of the city. Where did it come from? He then took it as a bad sign.

Climbing from a clean slate

Boris Dedeshko recalls: "A small expedition." There were four of us on the glacier: me, Denis, a Nepalese cook and his assistant. We were in Nepal, but the classic route to Cho Oyu is from Tibet, from the Chinese side, and from the Nepali side is a steep impregnable wall. There are no easy ways, and only professionals go there. The base camp stood at 5200 m and the height of Cho Oyu was 8201.

Boris recalls: the route of the highest category of complexity, classified as high-altitude technical. According to him, the level of danger is extreme. You had to use all your experience and knowledge.

They met at the School of Instructors, walked in the same department. Denis was already a master of sports of international class, and all those who practiced in that group are now leading coaches, instructors and pass on their experience to others.

Recalling the extreme ascent of Cho Oya in the alpine style, Boris says: “I had such a mistake – not in the vertical area had to stand for the night, and the place I chose as a tent, Denis rejected.” He showed a different place, but he has this feature: he can sleep on any stones, and, no matter how uncomfortable the shelf is, he will rest, and his performance will not decrease. I have to make a good flat area to stretch out to the full height. We had a half-sitting night, but where I originally wanted to put the tent, rocks with ice came from above. Boris says that since then he has become much more attentive to security issues. It was a sign, and he realized that you can't rely on the fact that trouble won't happen to you.

In order to save time and avoid the risk of being arrested for illegally crossing the border, they descended from the top along the climb. In addition, where entire snow fields lie on the slopes, there is a greater risk of being swept away by an avalanche.

There are seven- and eight-thousanders are not very difficult technically, where you have to trample a lot of snow and travel long distances in conditions of lack of oxygen, and here you still need to climb a vertical rock up, using all technical means. It is very difficult, Boris notes. We went down to a place where the slope was with a 40-degree slope, and the snow on the knee, and I suggested Denis to go just in a bundle. But he insisted I make a station. I had to dig about 70 centimeters of snow to get to the ice and spin the drills. I started walking down the railing rope. Moved, as expected, vertically down, but still the mass of freshly fallen snow on a steep slope came down in an avalanche. This snow mass squeezed me to the end of the rope, and the station on the ice of two drills is reliable. It withstands a great load, and the knot that was tied at the end of the rope allowed me to hang on the railing like a fish on a hook.

The Himalayan epic of Denis Urubko began in 2000, when on a trail in the highest mountains of the world he met a Russian businessman and he paid him Permit on Everest. So in the treasury of the climber "fallen" the first giant, and Cho-Oyu became for Denis Urubko the final mountain in his program of ascents to all 14 eight thousanders of the world.

Meanwhile, the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) has called on the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) to recognize six more eight-thousanders in Nepal as separate mountains. It is proposed to declare as separate eight-thousanders South Kanchenjunga, West Kanchenjunga, Central Kanchenjunga and peak Yalung Khang, Middle Lhotse and Lhotse Shar. “The Nepal Mountaineering Association said it conducted a study of six peaks, brought in experts, gathered evidence of their geographical isolation,” the report said.

Someone walks by the tent

Things happen in the mountains. Once on the Central Tien Shan with Boris Dedeshko and Denis Urubko happened one strange story. They both heard ... the roar of Nepalese trumpets. “We then made a first pass to Przewalski Peak, which is located in the Meridional Range in the upper reaches of the North Inylchek glacier. It is a rarely visited mountain and only two climbs are known. Yuri Popenko walked on the wall. There was a group of Boris Salamatov on the mountain, who passed the traverse of Khan-Tengri – the Marble Wall, and we just removed their note, which had been lying on a stone tour for about 40 years.

We were coming down, the weather was starting to deteriorate. They set up a tent on the pass and heard the roar of trumpets, such as those seen in the monasteries of Nepal. But where we were, for many, many kilometers there is no housing. People were only in the international camp "Khan-Tengri" in North Inylchek, from where they climb this seven thousandth. And here it is like a monastery and trumpets sound. It was a signal for us: snow began to fall, avalanches began to descend, and there is a rather steep ice wall there, he says. Denis Urubko told how he once spent the night at the top of the peak of Khan Tengri for acclimatization and white stripes of light passed through his tent at night.

“I have a more scientific worldview. I try to find a logical explanation for everything, says Boris. Sometimes things happen that don’t lend themselves to logic. Sometimes someone walks next to the tent, footsteps and breathing are clearly heard. I usually have the courage to open the tent and see what's on that side, and I don't see anything. This does not necessarily occur at an altitude of 7000 meters, it happens lower. Perhaps it's a personal experience where you can hear things that aren't really there.”.

If a friend is suddenly..

In the winter of 2024, Denis Urubko fell into a crack in Karakorum and lost his gloves. He informed Boris Dedeshko about the incident, and in a matter of days a friend collected a large sum.

“I once again thank all our climbers and mountain lovers. They responded to requests for assistance. Denis is an ascetic, and he never bothers about insurance, walks with minimal expenses. Payments came from different countries. There were transfers from Russia, but our Kazakhstanis collected the most.

I sent money to Denis. It was enough to cover all the costs associated with his evacuation and treatment in Pakistan. His tickets were gone, and we had to get new ones. He returned to Europe and had enough money to recover. As a sign of gratitude, Denis flew to Almaty and held a series of lectures. He talked about sports, his life, the mountains. He signed his books and answered questions.

Recently, Denis Urubko published his new book in Russia. In 2027, a world-renowned climber planned an expedition to Broad Peak (8046 m, Pakistan) in the winter along a new route. As part of the Height 8848 Urubko project, he also plans alpine-style expeditions along new lines.

Boris Dedeshko is a mountain guide, mountaineering instructor, winner and prize-winner of various championships, trains the Alpine Asia Team section named after Gennady Durov. Well, we are preparing to hold a solemn event dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the first Soviet Himalayan expedition to Everest in 1982 and the 30th anniversary of the Kazakhstan expedition to Everest (from the north) in 1997.