(16) Scenic but so inaccessible

This is a delayed post. In retrospect I should have been reporting more regularly but, in fact, there was little news to report. I taught an Earth Science class every day for two months which was quite enjoyable but did require a fair amount of out-of-class prep and grading. Students learned to identify basic rock types using samples I collected in the fall and also improved their skills in map-reading, Google Earth analysis, and 3D visualization. With regard to field trips, all I could say was "look out the window". Maybe I should have taught a glaciers class?

Until March the roads were snow-packed, the sidewalks icy, and the mountains buried beneath a meter of snow. Back home I would revel in winter, using snowshoes and x-country skis to travel into the backcountry. Not here. Skis would be useless but snowshoes would have made a big difference. Shoulda, coulda.... And I woulda needed to be up-to-speed on avalanche safety, given the nearly constant slumps and slides cascading down the steep slopes. And that's not the only hazard: a wolf pack arrived in February, tragically mauling a child and man in one village and killing two women in another. Yikes.

The university celebrated the equinox (a national holiday called Nawruz) with a ten-day Spring Break. Perfect timing. So a group of us traveled to Dushanbe en-route to Uzbekistan for a Silk Road tour. And instead of the typical 12-hour drive, the university arranged for helicopter transport. What an incredibly great feeling to fly just 90 minutes through some of the most spectacular mountains on earth, arriving well-rested in balmy Dushanbe and leaving winter fully in our past.

Typical winter day along the Pamir Highway, east of Khorog

Headwaters of the Gundt River

Khorog is nestled in the hidden cleft below these mountains

Wolf tracks and belly slides above the UCA campus

Market day in mid-March and the south-facing slopes are finally losing their snow

Southern Pamirs near Khorog, rising to elevations >16.000'

Flying through (rather than over) the Southern Pamirs

By mid-March the central Pamirs are starting to lose their snow

A photo for all the structural geologists out there

Pamir highway along the meandering River Panj, near Darvoz. Tajikistan in the distance, Afghanistan in the foreground