Words Ryan Taylor, Elliot Smith, Peter Biskind and Will Saunders Photos and Captions Will Saunders Intro Kade Krichko CURLING The Silk Road once traversed these mountains and high-alti-tude plains, bringing countless riches across Central Asia and into Europe. But Tajikistan’s more recent history of Soviet rule, civil war and societal unrest provides an intense back-drop for a present-day ski mission. Then again, a mountain range with a total lack of information in today’s globalized, screen-dominated society tends to stoke the curiosity. That unknown is what brought Ryan Taylor to the Pamir in 2016. A ski guide from Temple Basin, New Zealand now living in Japan, Taylor and his ski partner Elliot Smith set their sights on the Fedchenko Glacier, the longest glacier outside of the North and South poles. Equipped with dated Soviet military maps and printed satellite imagery, they ticked off a few lines in un-skied territory, but it was the wild spires of rock jutting even higher above them—and the accompanying library of jaw-dropping couloirs—that all but ensured a second trip. That rebate would come in 2019, with Taylor and Smith linking up with another Temple Basin connection, Peter Biskind, now a full-time guide living in Valdez, AK. Biskind rounded out the group with Will Saunders, a Utah-based adventure sports photographer and cinematographer. From around the globe, the quad-pack convened in the hectic streets of Dushanbe—Tajikistan’s capital—in May of 2019. The crew had a few ski objectives, but their eyes were focused on Taylor’s “Dream Line,” a shot he describes as a “twisted, re-curving couloir like something you would halluci-nate on an acid trip.” Chasing the Tajik dream through a month of the crew’s field diaries, here is their story, in their own words. west off the mighty Himalaya, Tajikistan’s snow-cloaked Pamir Mountains exist in relative obscurity. Reaching higher than 25,000 feet, they stand at elevations comparable to the world’s tallest range, yet, perhaps due to an absence of English guidebooks and documented ski mountaineering history, remain largely unexplored by the Western world. Ryan Taylor crosses one of the wildest ice bridges of the trip on our way back down the Nightmare Icefall. The bridge was about 15 feet long, two feet wide and 50 feet deep, falling off into a cavern of broken ice. This was the only bridge we could find that would get us across the icefall. With anchors set up we went for it one at a time keeping an ear out for any odd sounds of ice fracturing. 046 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 14, Issue 1: Page 46
