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Beyond The Picket Fence

by Sherryanne De La Boise

Medeu Mudflow Control Dam

There are five rivers that feed Almaty, Kazakhstan. One flows out of Kazakhstan, into China and then back into Almaty.

The Chinese have been siphoning off so much water that the river in Almaty is just a trickle.

The Chinese say not to worry, as in a couple of years, the flow of river water will be restored.

We were in western China in 2019 (most people go to eastern China). We saw some of the newly built river beds and dams.

These were widened areas for the river, slightly deepened, that had tall dam walls built at specific intervals.

What the Chinese are doing is creating, then filling giant reservoirs of fresh river water by holding back the river water.

The adjacent train and vehicular roads have already been elevated in anticipation of the future pools of water.

The construction project is massive.

Well, when you set aside 75% of a river's water, the remaining flow is just a creek, which is what we are looking at here in Almaty in 2012.

My husband is anxious to do another day of hiking into the mountains around Kazakhstan.

I have found a 40 minute cable car ride that will take us up to the Talgar Mountain pass, not only cutting a lot of hiking, but going over the most amazing dam, the Medeu Mudflow Control Dam.

Landslides are a problem in Almaty. Five times during the 20th century, Almaty has been buried under mudflows and boulders triggered by heavy rainfall.

In 1921, 10 million cubic feet of flow destroyed the city, killing people. 3 million cubic meters of rock tumbled through the city at the rate of 900 cubic meters per second. Something had to be done.

As you may have realized, every American scientist seems to have a Russian counterpart, working on the same topic, devising the same outcomes.

We had Wernher von Braun devising rockets ("what goes up, surely must come down,” about him quipped Tom Lehrer), while the Soviets had Siberian mathematician, Mikhail Lavrentyev, known for the theories of "direct explosion.”

Rather than build a dam by excavating a hole or building a wall, Lavrentyev did the calculations on how to blast dirt from one mountain location and have it land in a pile, making a solid retaining wall of dirt and boulders.

The first blast in 1966 was 1,800 tons of explosive. The top of a mountain was relocated exactly onto the desired dam location.

The largest explosion used 3,900 tons, registering 7 on the Richter scale and breaking every window in Almaty. Can you imagine the dirt just flying through the air and landing in a precision pile?

But it worked. Two years prior to our visit, there had been an extreme rain for three days. Huge trees toppled, boulders came sliding down, the entire backside was filled with water, mud and debris. Almaty should have been wiped out. Water came over the top of the dam, but it held!

When the water was absorbed, the ground behind the dam was several hundred feet higher.

As the cable car went over the beautifully manicured front of this dam, complete with teenagers in open cars drinking and driving, we see the sheer drop-off of the barren, dry backside.

I guess I expected a lake. Instead it's very deep, expansive dry, flat land, surrounded by mountains. But, the teenagers have been there. On the ground, the white boulders spelled out a name and a really naughty word. I took a picture of it, I was laughing so hard.

The cable car continued up the mountain. It passes over the Olympic Training Center for Soviet Speed skaters.

Built by Stalin in 1949, it gives Russian athletes the benefit of training on the highest rink in the world, with artificial ice in the summer. The center ice is large enough for two hockey rinks. It is just mammoth.

We cable car over a collection of Chinese-Swiss style vacation houses, except for one that looks just like Darth Vader. The cable car ends at the Chimbulak Ski Lodge. There are skiers loading onto a chair lift, but our hiking path is off to the right.

I was hoping to get far enough away from civilization to feel what the nomads on the silk road mush have felt as they crossed at this extreme altitude.

Had read a National Geographic Magazine account from the 1970's that was so different from what I was experiencing.

We are joined by an insane collection of local 20-somethings.

What I failed to realize that was that they mistook me for a local pop-star. Ha ha!

Booze, pills, the thin air of high altitude, these youths had it all and were ready to party high in the mountains.

Lost was the harsh reality of Mother Nature, because at the end of the day, they would take the cable car home.

Having now seen her DVD, I definitely should make myself available for celebrity impersonations.

Well, until I think about some of her moves on that DVD. She can dance and bend in ways that I did not think possible. Madonna looks like an innocent virgin in comparison. I don't think I can flex that way without a lot of advance yoga.

They took lots of pictures with us and departed.

So, we marched along until we hit where the storm had washed-out the asphalt road. We pressed on.

The craggy peaks ahead of us are some of the newest mountains on our planet. Landsides and earthquake are regular occurrences, but not volcanic action.

All that USMC training, my husband just trucks on, while I am about to have a coronary.

We will barely make the last cable car down for the night. But, we do reach the top of the world.

Had I listened to reason, I would have missed the experience of standing at the crest of snow bound valleys and witnessed the difficulty that traders have had for thousands of years, as they got silk and spices across the continent.

We had moved from the Hotel Kazakhstan to the Intercontinental after our initial two nights. I am so glad that we did not go there straight away, as we would have never been permitted to take our walks.

The Intercontinental forced us to hire a licensed guide for any time that we attempted to leave the facility.

I did manage to escape, with a hotel worker, on the ruse of going for a cigarette. She escorted me to the skating arena to purchase a Team Almaty hockey jersey, then showed me how to flag down a car and get back to the Intercontinental. 

The locals hail a car. A driver pulls over and the passenger says where they want to go and how much they are willing to pay. If it's agreeable, the doors are unlocked. If not, the driver departs.

Car owners do this on their way to and from errands/work to pick up extra cash.

Perhaps what I find hard about the pandemic is the inability to go where I please. It's a very American thing, not permitted in other countries, this freedom of movement. Let's get this pandemic over and get back to the good parts of being Americans.