Bazarduzu, Azerbaijan Highpoint

Bazarduzu (14,652ft/4466m)

July 25-26, 2023

Eric, Andreas, Ian

Our big goal for the summer was to climb two 7000m peaks in Tajikistan: khorzenevskaya and communisma. This would hopefully allow Andreas and I to finish the snow leopards list, the 7000m peaks of the former Soviet union. The standard way to climb these peaks is to helicopter to moskvina glade basecamp at around 14,000ft. However, this is a very high elevation to reach unacclimated, so we wanted to do a preacclimation climb first. 

It turned out it was cheaper for all of us to have a layover in Azerbaijan first, and the highpoint of azerbaijan, bazarduzu, would be an excellent acclimation peak. We could spread the climb over two days so we could first sleep at 10,700ft, then summit the next day. We would then descend to low elevation while travelling to Tajikistan so would hopefully be well acclimated to helicopter to moskvina glade.

Bazarduzu is on the russian border and requires a special permit to climb. We went with azerbaijanguides.az for the permit and mandatory guide. They were great. 

I arrived in Baku around 1230am July 25 and had an interesting journey to our hotel, the Sahil hostel and hotel. I took a taxi from the airport, but about a mile from the hotel there was a burning car in the road and police waving us away. The taxi driver said the hotel was down that road and I’d have to walk.

I had 120lbs of gear so lugged it along the road. The burning car exploded as I walked by but I was far enough away to be safe. By 2am I reached the hotel and managed to get a few hours nap. 

We were up at 6am and moving soon after. Abdulla picked us up and after a supermarket stop we started driving. We drove north to Quba then made it to the small village of Xinaliq.

There we met Babek, who would be our guide. We transferred to an old Soviet-era jeep and continued on a very rough 4×4 road. Soon out of town we reached a checkpoint with military guys but made it through no problem. 

The road was rough, passing through rivers and up and over a muddy pass. One big soviet era truck came down and had chains on the tires. 

We eventually reached a high alpine meadow with grazing sheep and great views of Bazarduzu in the distance. It was the only snow covered peak around. 

After two hours we reached the end of the road at the trailhead around 3pm.

From there we hiked a bit over an hour up a good trail to the high camp at 10,700ft. There was intermittent drizzle but the weather was mostly good. We set up tents and the summit looked tantalizingly close.

Abdulla had said it would take 12 hours round trip from camp to summit and back. But Babek said based on our pace to camp it would be 5 hours up and two down. 

That seemed like too long for that evening so we just did a short hike up to a viewpoint at 11,200ft then returned to camp. 

Babek pulled up the meteoblue forecast on his phone and it looked like rain all night and the next day but a brief break between 6am to 9am. So he proposed starting at 3am to reach the summit in the break in weather. 

We went to bed at sunset. By midnight a big thunderstorm rolled through with heavy rain. I don’t think any of us slept much after that. 

By 230am it had quit thundering and the rain seemed to have let up a bit. This seemed consistent with the forecast and we started up on schedule.

Babek was wisely wearing rain pants and gaiters with rain jacket. I had unfortunately underestimated the weather and hadn’t brought my rain or snow pants. I just had my jacket. 

I my pants were soon soaked but I stayed warm enough as we kept ascending. We took a direct route to the summit instead of the route shown on gaia which gains the east ridge and then follows the ridge.

We zig zagged up the scree slope and the rain gradually changed to snow. Perfect hypothermia conditions unfortunately. By sunrise around 530am the snow finally relented and we crested a small ridge. 

My gloves were soaked but I switched into a dry pair and put on my mini puffy. There was actually a nice partially clear view of peaks to our south and west. 

We soon continued up to stay warm following the se ridge. As we got higher the snow got deeper, and we occasionally sunk in drifts to our shins. This appeared to have all fallen the previous night since the peak had looked mostly snow free the previous afternoon. 

The wind soon picked up and Ian needed to descend to warm up. Andreas decided to speed up to warm up and took the lead. 

I hung back with Babek but I was also getting too cold at that pace, so i told Babek I would go catch up to Andreas. 

I caught up at the east ridge, but then visibility dropped and we were in a whiteout. The summit was very close, though, so we decided to continue moving to stay warm and we would meet up with Babek as we returned.

We generally followed the east ridge but it wasn’t very well defined in the whiteout. As we got higher I pulled up the map on gaia on my phone and we used that to navigate to the exact summit. 

Unfortunately there were no views in the whiteout and conditions were miserable in the cold and wind. 

I’m glad I hadn’t brought my survey equipment as I had considered since there was no way I would hang out there for a one hour measurement. 

We stayed long enough for a few pictures but then turned around. Our tracks were tricky to follow since they’d drifted over so I mostly navigated by my GPS watch. 

We made good time down following our exact ascent route but didn’t see Babek. It appeared he took a slightly different route up and we missed each other as he was going up and we were going down. 

We knew he had climbed the peak many times so he would likely just reach the summit then see our tracks going down and follow them to meet up with us. 

We kept descending until we finally got below the whiteout at the scree slope. Babek caught up to us then and we exchanged fist bumps for summitting. 

The scree made for a very fun descent and we were able to run down. We made it back to camp by 8am for a 5 hour round trip. 

This was much faster than expected and babek said the driver wasn’t supposed to meet us until noon. So we waited around in camp a few hours, then made the 45min hike back down by 11:15am. 

Babek got service then and said the overnight rain had washed out the road and our driver would be delayed. 

The sun briefly popped out and we set out clothes to dry. But then we got bored and decided to start hiking out to save time. 

We hiked out for 3 miles until a big river crossing, then waited there. It started raining but there was a sheperds shelter that we hid in and took a nap.

By 320pm we saw two jeeps approaching. I won the bet on arrival time with my bet of 330pm. They had actually left the town at 9am that morning but had to repair part of the road so the 2 hour journey had taken 5.5 hours. 

Our driver drove across the river, picked us up, then we headed back. Meanwhile another group headed up, having waited out the bad weather in town. 

The drive back was much rougher and the rain had really taken a toll on the road. But we made it out in 2 hours. After dinner in the village we got back to Baku by 10pm, then started getting ready for our flight to Tajikistan the next day. 

 

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