Memoirs of a trade clerk about the campaign June 18–27, 2006

I was not going to analyze the reasons that pushed me, a homebody and even worse - a computer couch potato, to take such a desperate step as hiking in the mountains for a whole week. But the question from Kirill, our instructor-guide, awakened memories of this.

The route never gave me any doubt - the mountainous Crimea. The reason for this certainty was the impression from a fleeting acquaintance with the Ai Petri plateau, thanks to the cable car I don’t remember-in-which-year. I was struck then by the contrast of the cool, fragrant, dry air of the plateau compared with the humid, hot, thick air of the coast. And when I saw some houses on the plateau, envy of those who lived in them forever settled in my soul. And I definitely want to visit these mountains again.

If I had experience, I would go on my own (sometimes I like absolute solitude). If I had friends or acquaintances who love hiking, I would certainly go with them. You could also look for like-minded people in the city - but this requires time to find travel companions and confidence in your ability to keep up with experienced travelers along the way.

Vacation, as always, came unexpectedly. Therefore, for the first time, it was decided to go on a “paid” hike. After surfing the Internet, I came across this site. The conditions suited me very much - both the price and the guarantee of success for unprepared travelers and the flexibility of the route.

I think everything that has been said helps to understand that, in addition to the desire for aesthetic pleasure from sensations, I was driven by the desire to test myself and gain confidence for future hikes.

Relatives and acquaintances, people who are just as narrow-minded as I am, tried their best to dissuade me: there are only homeless people, alcoholics and maniacs hanging around the mountains. It was funny to hear this, because all such categories of citizens usually mix little, moving along a closed trajectory of their “concerns.” At best, bottles are collected on the coast. But nothing can lure them into the mountains.

However, the poison of their doubts seeped even through my impenetrable optimism, and at the Simferopol station I felt somewhat more wary than I would like. I was expecting a catch.

But the fears turned out to be in vain - the appearance of our instructor and guide coincided with my ideas about normal, experienced tourists. My companions on the hike - a couple from Moscow - also don’t look like homeless people. Maybe a little bit for tourism maniacs :-)

So, the four of us (Kirill, Ilya, Masha and I), having purchased the missing water containers in the form of two-liter bottles of mineral water and distributing the food into backpacks, set off by minibus to the village of Perevalnoye at approximately 14:00. Before this, Kirill insisted that we put the extra tent in the storage room. There were four of us, and there were tents for seven people. Kirill gave his two-person tent to Ilya and Masha, and my two-person tent remained for me and Kirill. At first it seemed to me to be excessively calculating - just think, only 3-4 kg...

The minibus took us almost to the very beginning of the “Donkey Trail”, along which we climbed to the Chatyrdag-Yayla plateau. It was very difficult for me. The reason, as it turned out, was not only that I was not a donkey, and not only that my health was weakened by the keyboard, but also that I was wearing my backpack incorrectly. The backpack hung on my shoulders, not resting on my pelvis and sacrum at all. This not only strained the shoulders but also made breathing difficult, which is very important on the climb. In addition, it turned out that when climbing a steep path with a load on your shoulders, you can’t walk widely - this reduces your breathing and increases your heart rate. As a result of all my mistakes, I probably looked so depressing that Kirill had to take the pot from me halfway to the plateau and give me a lighter load. It was then that I happily remembered the tent left in Simferopol.

While going up we met two extreme motorcyclists who were moving down. In my opinion these were completely crazy people. Here you can barely cope with your backpack so that it doesn’t drag you down, and they’re riding around on motorcycles!

One way or another, I still crawled onto a plateau. Masha and Ilya, vigorously walking ahead, made me resent my own weakness and keep up. I myself would have climbed the plateau all day, no less. This is what a team means! :-)

Almost immediately after the ascent, the Emine-Bair-Koba cave was discovered (with the loud advertising name “Cave of Mammoths”). There was also a buffet here. We visited the cave. What can I say about the cave? I wasn't particularly impressed. I don’t like it when there are steps laid out, lights in the right places and music playing. I want, albeit deceptively, the feeling of a pioneer, to climb with a flashlight, clinging to natural ledges and not noticing that they have been polished by thousands of hands and feet. To “accidentally” come across underground lakes, stalactites and stalagmites and bones of fossil animals. And so that there is no buffet and asphalt. But alas, what can you do, you can’t please everyone.

I don’t know what made Kirill change his route. Perhaps my inept ascent along the Donkey Trail? Or my exclamation at the sight of the Chatyr-Dag ridge: “Are we really going to climb there?!” One way or another, we didn’t climb the ridge. I didn’t dare to clarify “why” - we weren’t going and thank God, climbing another 500 meters up seemed to me then, if not madness, then a temporary clouding of reason.

By the way, about reason. One of my first feelings in the mountains was the feeling of my insignificance. In the city, in the bustle among your own kind, self-esteem can swell to incredible proportions. The sea is knee-deep. Mountains put everything in its place. The unshakable postulates of atheism and cynicism immediately show cracks. I immediately want to believe that someone kind is keeping at least one eye on his fussy creatures, and if something happens, he will provide a “cover.”

Already at the end of the hike, having gotten into shape, I felt a vague regret that I had not climbed Mount Eklizi-Burun, and at first I was afraid to stutter - what if they would drag me up the mountain again? But one way or another, we have to admit that we did the right thing by limiting ourselves to the plateau to begin with - it’s better to get used to the mountains gradually.

After the Mammoth Cave we moved along the plateau to the South-East, towards the Tissovo Gorge. Along the way, we stopped at a spring near the training center to refuel with water. Should I go and work there as a watchman? Sorry, the vacancies are already filled. They probably won’t even hire him as a guard dog. :-) And I would really like to live on a plateau like this...

As if in response to my complaints about the lifelessness of the plateau and the impossibility of getting food here, we saw a hare, and after some time (maybe already on Demerdzhi-Yayla?) a roe deer, gracefully bouncing with its light hindquarters, galloped away from us into the grove. After dinner, we spent the night somewhere near the descent into Privet Gorge.

The next morning, after having breakfast (I don’t remember exactly what we ate, but it was surprisingly tasty and filling), we began our descent down the gorge.

There were no yew trees on the trail. Kirill said that the name is quite different from reality. Maybe if I knew what yew looked like, I would have noticed at least one. Probably almost all of them were cut down because of the value of the wood. So now the name “Beech Gorge” would be more correct. Now, having searched on the Internet, I found several lines about how yew trees seem to be found north of the main path along the gorge.

The beech forest looked very impressive, in places simply fabulous. Only elves were missing. Many of the beeches looked quite old. There was no need to pick at the trees with a saw or an ax to understand how dense and durable their wood was. A quick glance at these gigantic trees with smooth bark was enough. The trunks, thinly covered with spots of lichen of different shades from light gray to green, bearing a huge heavy crown, left no doubt about their strength. However, I quickly got used to all this luxury and brazenly went downstairs.

We were able to finally get our bearings and imagine the path we had taken only when we emerged from the forest onto the Angarsk Pass. Looking back, I couldn’t believe that somewhere up there there was a section flat enough to begin the descent from the plateau. It turned out that after the descent we passed through the saddle between the Sugarloaf Mountain and the Chatyr-Dag ridge. In the forest it was completely unclear. And stopping to ask for a card seemed inappropriate. In addition, in the forest it is difficult to find landmarks to determine your position on the map. In general, it’s useful to look back sometimes...

And again we climb a little up the mountain. But the trail here doesn’t go up so steeply, and I’m already more accustomed to it than at the beginning.

It's a pity I didn't have a map and didn't mark our path. Now, sitting at home, I can’t quite clearly remember the trajectory of our movement to the southern and northern Demerdzhi. Such forgetfulness is facilitated by a relatively large number of distractions: some flying predator has clawed a small bird, an abandoned rose plantation with a smell surprisingly similar to perfume, and a grandmother collecting flowers for jam. I was ready to give all the money for one spoon of such jam, it seemed so tasty (and I didn’t have much money in my pocket :-) I’m already silent about the panoramas of mountains with rocks that have intricate names and shapes. In general, everything was somehow mixed up. Now our movements seem like this: after a slight ascent from the pass, the trail after descending turned first into a dirt road and then, halfway between the villages of Lavender and Luchistoye, into an asphalt road.

After walking us a little along the asphalt, Kirill offered us a choice: to go through Luchistoye and stop at a store, or along a drying up stream, climb a little up and wait there while he went to the village for supplies. The asphalt, along with the village, was rejected as inappropriate for the spirit of adventure. Having climbed the bed of the stream, we stopped for lunch with a view of the path we had traveled, a horse farm below and a tiresomely high rocky mountain above us. I must say that throughout the previous journey I was constantly aching internally at the thought of the upcoming ascents - the city’s effeminacy was making itself felt. Sometimes my whining broke through the barriers to the outside in the form of humorous (to the best of my ability) remarks with the following content: “Well, up the mountain again!”, “Are we sure we won’t lose the height we’ve gained along this path?”

But after climbing to the Demerdzhi plateau, adaptation was over and I almost didn’t care whether our path was uphill or downhill.

I admit, I am self-centered. Therefore, I pay little attention to others. But here I must say that in my opinion, Ilya was very lucky with Masha. As Comrade Saakhov would say (see the film “Prisoner of the Caucasus”): “Komsomol member, athlete, finally just a beauty!” Unfortunately, it is difficult to find a modern equivalent for these outdated words. But having returned to the city and looking at the girls I know and not so well, I can hardly imagine them in the mountains, with a backpack above their heads, on a steep climb and at the same time with a smile on the fifth day of the trip.

The path to South Demerdzhi seemed to me the steepest and steepest on the hike. It's a shame it didn't last long. I looked so closely at my feet that I became completely disoriented. When at the top, overlooking the picturesque rocks, we met a single tourist and exchanged a few words with him, for a long time I could not believe that we had come from the opposite slope to the finish line.Only by looking here and there from above did I become convinced that our path encircled the slope along a significant part of its circumference. I don’t think I’ll be much mistaken if I say that while climbing up we described a semicircle.

It was a long time ago, and not by me, that the phrase “In the mountains is close to the eyes, but far to the feet” was hackneyed. But for some reason, on the contrary, from above everything seemed further away than it actually is. From South Demerdzhi, the distance to Alushta seemed to me to be ~30 km. Fellow travelers assured me that it was much less. I don’t remember the number given by Kirill, but the map shows that I was wrong by a factor of five. So the next time, when on another mountain they told me that the sea was shining there in the vicinity of Sevastopol, I had almost no doubt that it was so. And now I have no doubt.

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Here I notice with horror that I have gone seriously wild in my graphomaniac impulse. Will anyone read to the end?! Hardly. So I'll wrap it up.

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I omit the pebbles, grass, birds and various fragrant “buttercup flowers”.

Next was Northern Demerdzhi and its plateau, a mountain lake (reasonably clean and moderately cold for the immense pleasure of swimming). There was a descent from the plateau to a whole river of drinking water and along it to the Jur-Jur waterfall (to understand, I must say that I was gradually overcome by water mania, so when I saw this wonderful river, I hardly suppressed the desire to lie in it and drink, drink, drink for at least two hours. The water in the river, by the way, is drinkable, and cold. Tasty. I would call it that - Tasty River.) On the way to Jur-Jur we had the opportunity to contemplate a multi-stage waterfall, which I liked more than Jur-Jur with its richness of colors and shapes. Smooth riffles, lush, juicy green moss along the edges - all this is dearer to me than the stupidly falling water of Jur-Jur. It's a pity that the fallen trees spoiled the view somewhat. Although fellow travelers said the opposite, that they liked Jur-Jur better.

Not far from the waterfall there was a wonderful clearing, where after swimming in the waterfall we set up camp. Swimming in a mountain river, even such a relatively warm one (I am of course aware that our hike is far from extreme, and there are colder rivers) is very invigorating. It is enough to cross the river barefoot, and your strength will be restored in an absolutely miraculous way.

Having closed the camp (after the mountains it was unusually stuffy to sleep here), we happily “ran” to the Karabi plateau. It turned out that there is an upper plateau and a lower one. Of course, we first climbed to the top one - from there we had an excellent view of the lower plateau. This was one of those times when I regretted not taking my camera. Although I don't collect bulky photo albums like many of my friends and colleagues, it's still a bit of a shame.

Part of the lower plateau from the upper one appears to be covered with smooth green hills that you just want to roll around on. It turned out that this is, to put it mildly, not true. On the other side of the plateau, this area looks like a pile of rocks. This is probably due to the movement of rock layers during the formation of the plateau. They crawled over each other and froze, pretending to be smooth for a southern observer and revealing rocky edges when viewed from the north. In terms of the beauty of the landscapes, I would put Karabi in first or second place on the hike (for my taste, only one resting place can be compared, although maybe it was there? Kirill, do you remember on which mountain there was a monument to the partisans? You also talked about the partisan airfield.).

After an equally picturesque and pleasant descent to the lower plateau along a rocky cliff, we had to make a fair detour along Karabi, looking for convenient approaches to our overnight stay - above the B. Buzuluk cave.

The cave came in very handy - even in June there was ice in it, reaching which without much difficulty, we were able to replenish our water supplies. Like this. We combined business with pleasure, which doubles the pleasure of descending to the glacier :-) I liked it here much more than in the “Mammoth” cave. And this despite the fact that we didn’t even have to shine a flashlight, we looked so shallowly.

The next day we crossed the plateau, meeting one "walking view" tourist, one "running view" tourist, and one "recumbent view" tourist. However, I suspect that the last two are fragments of a huge team of speleologists who built a camp for themselves on the slope of a gully near Mount Irtysh.

Passing through this camp, I could not marvel at the thoroughness with which it was organized, compared with our easy overnight stops. Although what is surprising here, considering how many caves there are in Karabi. You can “climb and climb” for at least a whole month until you get tired of it. I say this as a distinguished speleologist who has made two (!) approaches to this issue - Emine-Bair-Khosar and B. Buzuluk. :-)

Unfortunately, the lake we walked past on the plateau had already dried up by June. So, alas, I never heard the singing of the high-mountain toads. But there are as many larks as you like.

Since the further hike took place through the forest and along mountain roads, I don’t feel like describing it. For me, the main generators of impressions were mountain plateaus, springs, rivers and waterfalls. In a word, “water and stones.” The beech forest strikes you first. And the descent through the beech forest from the Karabi plateau was no longer so bright. Although quite cool at first. We went down, swam in the river, and walked from Krasnoselovka along the road to the sea. Moving further east to reach the sea in the Morskoye area seemed like overkill. Everyone was already a little tired and fed up with impressions. So, without any special meetings, it was decided to go to the sea in the Privetnoye area.

On Thursday, passing drivers did not pick us up. And we spent the night at the Nizhny Kok-Asan tourist camp, which turned out to be surprisingly equipped. Probably someone wanted to feed some VIPs or just “necessary” people with barbecue there. It’s hard to believe in the simple efficiency of the relevant services. On Friday we again set off along the road to Privetny, amusing ourselves along the way with debates about the nature of morality, logic and knowledge. OtakOt, neither more nor less. It is not known what we would have agreed to, what discoveries we would have made, but we were picked up by kind businessmen who were heading in the same direction for a load of wine.

And already from Privetnoye along the seashore we trotted to Rybachye. On this section of the route, I noticed only one attraction other than the sea - somewhere in the area of ​​the botanical reserve, a stream of fresh water of unknown quality runs from a steep bank. Arriving at Rybachye, one of the first things I did was drink the coveted yogurt (there was no kefir, but I didn’t want to look for it). And of course, I swam in the sea. Slightly missing civilization, we set up tents on the beach in a tent camp. On Saturday morning, Ilya and Masha went to rest on the more southern shores of Crimea. Kirill, having cooked his wonderful porridge for the last time, also went about his business. And I stayed to sunbathe and swim.

Two girls from Kherson and Nikolaev lived in a tent nearby. They probably took pity on the exhausted traveler, and when I offered them the rest of the firewood (I didn’t have my own pot and the fuel I had collected the day before had lost its value for me) they simply insisted that I eat more (it turned out they were preparing a “vegetable sauté with mussels”).

The sea was very calm, the water very warm and clear. Everything is perfect. But something was missing. Having spent the entire Saturday in blissful inactivity on the beach of the tent city, I suddenly felt that “the wind of wandering continues to push me at the back.” That there is no usual feeling of a backpack on your back and a T-shirt wet with sweat. On Sunday morning I packed my tent and prepared for an independent hike along the coast in the direction of Alushta. The girls honestly warned me that two dangers awaited me on the way to Alushta: the Moskovsky sanatorium, where security does not allow strangers onto the beach, and a wild nudist beach. I still didn't understand what they wanted to say by this. Maybe “stay, comrade, we’ll marry you...”? Rather, judging by the slightly sympathetic and contemptuous: “Perhaps you are looking for unity with nature alone?”, they took me for a potential nudist looking for companions.

I safely bypassed the beach of the maximum security sanatorium, but they shouldn’t have scared me of the nudist beach - all the way to Alushta I counted only 5-7 nudists, scattered haphazardly along the entire route. Moreover, I regretted the absence of a camera only once - already in the vicinity of Alushta, I managed to choose a deserted section of the beach between two breakwaters at the same time (again, oh me!). In order not to impose my company on the cramped beach, I politely climbed into the middle of the breakwater and settled there. My surprise that these two decided to darken 100% of the surface of their skin with tan was much weaker than my regret about the wrong location and the lack of a camera. All previous nudists evoked only a feeling of slight disgust. And here the crowd of men on the embankment, which either accumulated or dissolved, is indicative. It's a pity I was far away and didn't hear the dialogues. How did the beauties manage to throw off the “crooks”? However, I did not remain the only regular spectator of the delightful “shopping” visits for long. A large, noisy family with children came running in, the nudists had to partially dress, yelling, “love has passed, the tomatoes have wilted.” I got ready and left this spontaneously arisen landmark of Alushta.

And I got to Alushta with only one stop for the night - it seems in the Semidvorye area. There, not far from my tent, there was a sculpture of an eagle, and on the neighboring mountain there was a statue of something four-legged, probably a deer. Actually, I wanted to stop a little earlier. But it was hot, the lake promised by the map turned out to have dried up at least a month ago, and I did not dare to unfold the tent in such conditions. I realized how important it is to accurately calculate the time of the transition so that a good parking spot is reached by the end of the day and not by noon. In addition, I noticed new inhabitants of the Crimea (before that only birds, lizards, hare and roe deer were encountered) - field mice. Fearing for my food supplies, I decided to move on. So I reached Semidvorye and the next day to Alushta.

Alushta has changed quite a lot. The last time I saw her was about 15 years ago. Various expensive establishments, sanatoriums, and hotels appeared right by the sea.

Either I underestimated the speed of my movement, or overestimated the distance, but by lunchtime on June 26 I came to the end of the Alushtinskaya embankment. I had no desire to go further, nor did I want to return to Semidvore, but I didn’t come across any other good stops. So, after splashing around in the sea until evening, I went home.

Of course, to experienced travelers our hike may seem like a Sunday picnic, but for me it became a test. If it had been even a third more difficult, I might have given up somewhere in the middle of the way.

A few points that I thoughtlessly neglected, although I was aware:

- Before going on a hike, it is advisable to tan at least a little so that the skin learns to synthesize a protective pigment - otherwise, in order to avoid burns, you will have to give up shorts and sleeveless vests.

- Before going on a hike, you need to run intensely every day, morning and evening, for at least a month.

- Buy the latest edition of a map for tourists in Simferopol - it will be much more informative to “plot your route on your own” and discover your mistakes. Not for arguing with the guide, but for pleasure.

- Try to take a camera with you.

Finally I'm home.

I'm looking forward to my next vacation. :-)

July 04, 2006