This picture shows Dima and I during the first day of our hiking trip in the region around Arshan. For a number of years now Dima has helped to lead teams on hikes in Buryatia, and I have often joined in to help support him. These trips are often a mix of young people from the churches and other friends of ours, and are a great opportunity to go out into nature away from the distractions of our modern world and take in some of the more untouched parts of creation (at least as far as parts here on our earth are concerned) We had great hopes of people from the English Club joining us this year, and there was a lot of interest but in the end none of them could come because of work and school conflicts. This meant we had a small group, but we decided to make the trip anyhow. But having a small group did change some of the dynamics, the first being that we didn't have enough people to make renting transportation a great option financially. So we decided to use our van and pack all of us with our equipment in. It was a tight fit to put six people with all of our hiking gear into an eight passenger van, but it really worked pretty well. The only problem was that we were limited on time and had to leave after people got off of work on a Wednesday, and had a six hour drive ahead of us. We didn't get the last of the people and gear loaded up until after 10pm. Thankfully life has given me some experience with late driving and I was able to make the trip without getting sleepy. This was good because Dima was our back-up driver and he must have eaten something bad and was fighting a stomach ache that whole night and benefited from a little sleep during the drive.
After a six hour drive on roads that were occasionally nice (yes I said occasionally), and mostly paved, we stopped in the town of Arshan in the early morning hours. The plan was to park the van at the uncle of a friend of Dima's, but we didn't want to wake them at 4am, so we decided to try to get a couple of hours of sleep in the van. With how packed things were it wasn't the most conducive to sleeping, and that is definitely a time with being tall isn't the most helpful. As the sun came up we made our way to the house, parked the car, grabbed our gear and made our way to the trail head.
The town of Arshan is a sort of "resort" area built around natural mineral springs. I personally tend to feel like this just means my water has metal in it and tastes funny, but everyone (at least here) raves about the health benefits so we all stopped and filled water bottles before heading up the mostly frozen river. This first day we were really blessed with a beautiful sunny day.
Despite the beautiful day and beautiful scenery the first day was not the most enjoyable for me because I was so tired after having driven through the night. It probably doesn't help that this first part of the trek is with a full backpack of things for base camp, food for all four days and everything else that you might need. The picture above is me resting on a log as we try to figure out exactly where we want to set up our base camp.
This is a picture of our whole hiking team. It was an interesting mix of new Christians, veteran Christians, a guy who grew up in the church and another friend. It wasn't who we were first picturing coming on the trip, but as time went on you could see that God had put together the group. We had great conversations throughout the four plus days, and everyone seemed to go away encouraged from the time. We've seen some fruit from this too as since the trip the guy who grew up in the church has been coming around more and is really being challenged in his heart to decide if he will follow God or his own ways.
You may have noticed in the picture of our whole group that there were two dogs. These were definitely not expected members of our group, but they joined us for the entire hike. At first I thought they were just going to go with us a little way up the trail and then head back to their homes, but they came with us the whole way. On our way out we met some people who are part of an alpine hiking group from Irkutsk, and they told us that these dogs live there and always head up the trail with hiking groups. It turns out that they were by far the most experienced members of our team :). Of course the reason these dogs go with everyone is that they end up getting fed pretty well, and we had people in our group that made sure these two were fed well while they were with us too.
Here's a picture that shows some of our base camp. We really got blessed with this. As we were deciding where to set up a local guy came by (he was out gathering wild herbs), and told us that there had been a group up the previous week that gathered way more firewood than they needed and that we could set our camp up there and use the firewood. This was nice, and took away our need of spending time and energy in finding and cutting firewood. I was especially happy about not having extra work that first day, and I enjoyed a comfortable and long sleep that first night.
After getting to base camp on Thursday the plan was to make attempts at two different peaks, one on Friday and another on Saturday before heading out on Sunday. We ended up getting a late start on Thursday to head up what was an easier peak called "Thee Heads". It was an easier peak, but we still had to be careful of because of avalanche potential. This was a new peak for everyone on the team, and now that we have attempted it once, we realize we would have needed to get an earlier start. The problem was that there was very deep snow. It made for slow going all the way up the trail, and then up where we wanted to make our ascent. In the end we looked at the time and realized we would not make the summit, especially at the pace we were having to take. We turned around slightly disappointed, but ready to make an attempt on the next peak, "Arshan" named the same as the town, on the following day.
This is actually also a picture from Friday, but in the background you can see "Arshan". It was a hard push up a pretty steep trail early on Saturday.
As we climbed we went through a cloud layer which is always interesting and changes the feel of the whole environment.
As we got closer to the peak we started to get into more and more rocky parts like what you see in the background of the picture above. The two ladies with us didn't feel comfortable going up and they also didn't feel comfortable going down alone. After a bit of discussion we decided that I would head back to base camp with the two ladies and the other three guys would make an attempt at the summit. In the end they turned back too. There was just too much fresh snow on top of the rock and too much deep snow to try to push up any of the gullies. So in the end none of us summited on either day, but was still a great time and we got to see some beautiful alpine mountain areas.
The next day, Sunday, we had a great church service there in the mountains before packing up camp and heading out. One the way out we decided to have fun and take some pictures. Even hanging from the rock for a second or so while someone took my picture made me appreciate again the amazing strength and endurance that it takes for rock climbing.
This picture is the four guys that were on the trip. I grew in appreciating each one of them. Please pray as each is in a different place in their walk through life and their walk with God.
It has also become a tradition after these hiking trips to find a hot spring to go to. I enjoy hot springs anyhow, but after four days of hiking and carrying a heavy pack, not to mention not showering, they become something far more sublime. I'm thankful for how God answered our prayers for safety and for good conversations, some of which are continuing even now.
