Along The Kucherla River and Karatiurek/Karatyurek Pass in Siberia
The next morning dawned bright and sunny. The horsemen had returned with all the tents BUT still no silverware, or enough dishes to go around. The entire trek was spent drinking tea out of soup bowls, sharing the few cups and plates, waiting for someone to finish so you could have their cup or saucer. Laugh...that was about all anyone could do.
We also spent the entire trek standing up during all meals since there were no camp chairs to sit on which left only wet ground and mud with an occasional rock or log. That was the very last thing anyone wanted to do after hiking a long, if not downright exhausting, day trying not to be left behind.
Lots and lots of mud...so hard on the knees and ankles as each foot slides in a different direction. It took a few days before most of the mud was left behind. Anna was the only one who never got a speck of mud on her boots and never took a face plant or butt plant in it. The rest of us were absolutely covered and, as a matter of fact, all this mud completely destroyed ex-Marine's boots. They separated and cracked away from the sole and only duct tape kept them together until the trek was over. (TIP: Duct tape is an essential on any trip. You can repair just about anything.) ex-Marine then threw them into a trash can outside Moscow's airport. To illustrate how desperate the Russian people were, his boots were taken out of the trash by someone within minutes.
Kucherla Lake, about 3 miles long, had turquoise waters from an old high moraine, and was located in an alpine setting. Up to now, elevation change hadn't been drastic (perhaps a few hundred feet).
The Altai Mountain Range isn't very high but the entire area was vast and wild. Now along the Tekeliushka River still in the Kucherla Valley, and up a steep talus slope heading to the Karatiurek Pass at 10,037'. ("Talus" is just a scientific word for rocky fragments or stones.)
