Jigsaw of Broken Slate

‘It is very difficult to get a permit, so that’s why we don’t apply for one’. Our fixer and guide Tunar’s comment is a concise statement of Azerbaijani logic, yet it’s been three months since we received the last message from him. We were getting a little worried, as he’d previously planned to climb the infamous mountain Peak Pobeda in Kyrgyzstan. Relieved by a sign of life from Tunar, we finale the details of our expedition in the Azerbaijani Caucasus. We’re planning to climb four 4000m peaks, with an approach through an off-limits valley in the Shakhdag National Park. These mountains straddle the border of Azerbaijan and Russia’s Dagestan, making it a geopolitically sensitive area.

We’re on the road with an alpine club from Baku, of which Tunar Aliyev is the chairman. We set off from Azerbaijan’s modern capital city in an old, rattling Mercedes van across the dry plains, heading for the forested foothills of the Caucasus.

The base of our adventure is the hamlet of Qamarvan, where we stay in a mountain home owned by Igor Gagayev. He is a passionate storyteller and loves a good glass of vodka. He is, conveniently, the driver of the commander who runs the military border post that patrols the off-limits Yatakh Valley. Igor arranged ‘unofficial permission’ from the military commander to trek and climb in this unspoilt virgin river valley. Despite the commander’s consent, he advises us to pass the border post in the dark to avoid unnecessary delays. We get up in the dead of night and after we strap our packs on the rooftop of the rickety Soviet-era Lada, we head up to the start of the approach trek on a bumpy dirt track.

We find a line just underneath the top of the ridge that seems safe enough to cross. Carefully we place our feet at what we hope is stable enough rock and without major problems we find solid ground again. The team re-groups at a small plateau. In my mind, I’m doing my maths on today’s objective. It’s 11am now. So far we’ve been on the move for four hours now, without breaks. I estimate the summit of Gora Ragdan to be another hour and a half of climbing on rotten, exposed rock. We could be back in camp by 6pm if don’t take breaks, about an hour before sunset.

“I’m heading back” I’m telling Tunar. He seems shaken by the announcement. “Why?” I explain that I feel that the terrain is simply too dangerous. I want to be back in camp before dark and above all climbing Azerbaijan’s highest mountain Bazarduzu is much more important to me than these other two mountains. Twan agrees and after a short break we traverse back to our camp. Tunar and two other team members continue their climb, knowing that they will have to make their way back in the dark. I feel we made the right decision.

I turn on my head torch and check the time. 11pm. Twan is also still awake. “Have you seen them coming in?”. “No.” I am very worried. They have been climbing for 16 hours now, of which four hours in darkness. What if one of them has fallen off the ridge? A fast rescue operation is impossible as there is no mountain rescue in either Dagestan or Azerbaijan. Attempting a rescue ourselves is not an option either. The slopes are too steep and the rock is too brittle and instable. I turn and turn in my sleeping bag and finally hear voices just past midnight. The three men stumble into camp, completely exhausted  – but okay.

I wake up to the soft sound of snow falling on our tent sheet. The rest of the group is still asleep. Twan and I decide to pack our stuff and start our summit attempt up the 4465m high Bazarduzu. Clouds envelop the mountain, but occasionally the top of the peak reveals itself and we notice there is a dusting of snow around its summit. The climb looks incredibly steep and we scan the west face of the mountain for a feasible route up to the broad summit plateau. We leave the snoozing camp behind and zigzag around the soft gravel. The ascent feels good, we are well acclimatised and the packs feel much lighter. After four hours of sustained climbing, we reach the remains of a weather station on the highest point of Azerbaijan. Towards the east the vertical walls of the mountain Shakhdag rise up from the lowlands of Dagestan. The north face of the Bazarduzu summit ridge is plastered with the most easterly glaciers in the Caucasus Range. And to the west we can see the high Caucasus in Georgia, partly engulfed by clouds. There’s a brisk, cold wind and it’s time to start our almost three kilometre vertical descent back to Qamarvan via the broken terrain of the south buttress, the wild Yatakh Valley, and again a nerve-wrecking passage of the military border post.

Technically the climbing we encountered was terrible. The terrain was difficult to access. The combination of gravel, rotten slate and steep ground made the expedition hard going. But the pristine wilderness, the uncertainty about the routes, and the exciting geographical location made this journey a proper adventure; the kind of adventure that is becoming increasingly rare in our age of advanced technology and ever-increasingly human infrastructure in the mountains.