Picking up right where we left off…
We burnt some small dead thorn branches to boil our morning porridge into place and began the trudge up to Pakshif Pass and on the other side: the Garif River. An old road following a contour along the valley’s edge made the intial miles smooth and relatively easy. After 7 such miles, around noon, the road had become a path, and we were at the base of the pass, unable to see the top. What we could see was a steep pile of stones ranging from small-car to pebble size leading up and around a cliff corner. Andrew, trying to keep things positive, estimated it would take us an hour. The shepherds sitting at the bottom of the pass thought this unlikely.
It was our first big walk with loaded boats this year. With this inaugural trek came sore shoulders and much wind-sucking. Clearly, rusty paddling was not the only effect of an inactive winter in Dushanbe. At 3pm we stood at the half-way point looking up to the top of the pass. Our eyes were confronted with a cliff where we expected a steady rise. No paths were cut into the cliff, which now seemed to be guarding the saddle from access. As we walked toward it, we all scanned the half circle of cliffs ahead for a path to lead us to the other side. Just before reaching the base of the cliffs, Andrew spied a path cutting into a dirt section of the ridge and leading to the Garif watershed. A half hour later we were all at the windy top of Pakshif Pass; it was 5pm. Yuri announced it was time for a quick celebration and got out a chocolate bar he had stashed for just such an ocassion. In the cold wind with the light turning grey, we ate chocolate squares and enjoyed the view of cliffs, mountain top glaciers, and high peaks in the distance. It had taken us 5 hours. We hustled down into the Garif watershed and spent the night with two shepherds who were happy for the company and, unsurprisingly, incredibly generous.
The next day began with hopes of paddling but ended only with plenty of walking. We portaged several miles along a shallow, braided river that tunneled through several glaciers. Just when it looked possible to scrape down, the creek began to drop. The majority of the day was spent portaging down a steady descent.
In the early afternoon we reached a major confluence and decided to settle in for the night. In a grassy spot, we saw an old man with one good eye praying. He said he was from the lone village downstream- a totally isolated outpost of 4 homes whose only access to the outside world was a voyage over the pass from which we had just come. Incredible isolation even by Tajik standards.
After the confluence the river takes the name Darya Susof, and it is here we began paddling the next morning. During the first three miles of easy whitewater we got a good warm-up and floated past the village of Garif shrouded in fruit trees. The river began to drop. We scouted and ran several class IV rapids, and the water level started to rise as the day’s sunshine melted the glaciers upstream. Around noon a series of steep drops warranted serious scouting. The openning drops were runnable but lead inexorably into a river wide undercut with no eddies for escape. From a huge rock high on river right Andrew and Middy saw another couple unrunnable drops. We all portaged high on river left.
We put back in, ran some fun drops of medium size, and arrived at another series of horizon lines. Scouting revealed several slight drops and then a waterfall with some water going under a rock and some falling 10 feet onto rocks; all of the water went somewhere we didn’t want to go. Yuri carried on river left to a point a half mile below the waterfall where a path neared the river. Andrew and Middy decided to paddle down to the last eddy above the waterfall and portage around it on river right. Paddling the final drop before the waterfall, Middy dodged around a stick poking from river left, went off the first drop, and back endered into a fin-rock dividing the channel into two. He pinned between the fin-rock and the shore with his head above water. Andrew saw Middy pin and sprinted to shore to get out his rope. Middy’s knee came loose, and the skirt popped. He swam a final hole which pushed him against the river bottom. Rebounding hard off the river’s floor toward river right, Middy swam and blindly clawed at one of the two rocks before the waterfall. Behind the rock was a small pile of sand. Middy stood on the sand in the eddy, gasping and thrilled that the rock he caught was not the one in the waterfall itself. The back of the eddy slid off the lip; Andrew threw Middy the rope and swung him the last 10 feet to shore. Both were very happy to see Middy standing on that sand pedestal in the final eddy. Middy’s paddle got caught near the shore on some rocks, but his boat, shoes, and camera box came loose and ran the waterfall. The race was now on for Andrew and Yuri, farther downstream, to get the boat. Middy picked his way down the river right shore, shaken and barefoot. Andrew and Yuri retrieved the boat, making its way downstream like a sedated walrus, and Middy joined them downstream. They surveyed the damage. The boat was dented but paddleable, the camera box and shoes were long gone, and several nerves had been frayed. Everyone got in and paddled down. Shaken, Middy tried to remount the horse, but he would remain gun-shy for some time.
Downstream, another series of drops sent Yuri on a long scout on river left. Andrew and Middy waited, more anxiously than usual, to get paddling. Yuri returned and decided to portage after reporting a series of intimidating drops. Yuri’s portage was long and hot but, after a scramble up the canyon’s steep side, was relatively easy due to a path paralleling the river. Andrew and Middy paddled the first drops with Andrew leading and Middy following close behind. They arrived at a twisting rapid Yuri had described and portaged on a pile of boulders whoch long ago crumbled from the river right cliff wall. They seal launched in and dropped into a boiling slot against the right side wall. There was more class IV and a section of river surrounded by huge trees whose branches formed a canopy over the river. It was unlike any other place any of us had seen in Tajikistan.
We camped at another confluence where the Darya Susof became the Garif and agreed, despite the bad taste in everyone’s mouth from Middy’s swim, that this valley was stunningly beautiful, perhaps explaining why those four households choose to live in such isolation.
The Garif River began easy and spread out. We left our awesome confluence campsite and had a long warm- up before the big rapids began again. This was a welcome break after the previous day’s fearsome events, except maybe for Yuri, who would have preferred a vicious thrashing to get the juices flowing. When they did start, the rapids were mostly wide, bouldery, and complicated, though not too hard and aside from the odd undercut, not
too dangerous. We ran almost everything that morning employing the ’scout n’describe’ method, wherein one paddler sits in the eddy- blind to their fate beyond the horizon line they can see- and tries to put together a mental picture of the rapid below from the scouter’s account of what they may think might be kind of important but aren’t totally sure. For the one scouting, it’s like throwing a stick in the stream to see what will happen to it. Except in Tajikistan there isn’t so much timber available.
There were two portages: a long rapid with undercuts and an ugly waterfall. Middy and Andrew had to portage in shifts due to the recent loss of Middy’s shoes and the pointiness of all rocks, plants, and animals along the route. After the portages, we ran some challenging rapids and some class IV. Around three we stopped to camp, to let the afternoon high water pass by. Middy discovered that afternoon that we had several hundred vertical meters to descend before arriving at the next confluence, but who trusts those old Soviet maps? And what did the Soviets know about science anyway?
The following day around midmorning, we entered a canyon and received a Sputnik-like surprise; 1500 cfs dropping over 300 feet in well under the course of a horizontal mile. Huge boulders had calved off the canyon walls to form nine distinct drops, only one of which we ran that day. But with a bit less water… And a bit more self- confidence… And perhaps a sturdy faceguard… Really, most of the rapids were eminently runnable. No doubt we’ll regret not running them in the course of the reprieve from death we earned by not running them.
Andrew ran #8, consisting of a big, mostly submerged boulder that pushed all the water into the left canyon wall, bringing into being an enormous curler and associated mayhem. The run was graceless but ultimately effective. We all carried the ninth, and arguably most hideous, drop, then paddled some beautiful, continuous whitewater for another mile to the confluence. This was the furthest upstream point Andrew and Simon reached last year, whence longing, upstream glances had inspired this whole brutal affair.
That night it began to rain, but as it undoubtedly does not rain in Tajikistan in September, we all saw fit to eschew empiricism until it came dripping into our down sleeping bags. We paddled all day in the periodic rain. Most of the good whitewater came at the end, in the section we had carried up to run last year. Please refer to trip report 4c, and imagine a little more water. Ensconced in wet down, the night was cold; it’s a mystery to us how geese manage.
The next day we carried up to do the last couple of miles of the Duborso River. It was again great fun and games until Yuri got stuck in the hole at the bottom of a narrow, 8 ft slide. The hole was backed up by rocks on both sides, making a formidable boil that would not let Yuri out, either in his boat or swimming. He recirculated several times before Andrew could get a rope to him and help him to shore. Middy recovered his gear, and Yuri was ready to paddle again. Below the Duborso/Garif confluence, the river is called Sarbog. The first few miles of the Sarbog are fun, big water, similar to the Cheat. And as on the Cheat, there are some holes. Yuri’s second swim of the day (and the trip) came in the biggest of these. He received the pounding one would expect from such a hole but swam out without
(further) trouble.
Due to our taking a two hour break for a hot lunch, we didn’t get to the river’s end until evening. We camped there and in the morning found a car from the nearby town of Novabad to Garm, and then to Dushanbe. Yuri left the following morning for Moscow, and we are left to plan our next assault on the Pamirs- and on our own bodies- and eventual exit from Tajikistan.
