Photo from open sources
Says Alexander Tarasov: “This incident occurred in my youth, in 1983. I then worked in the geological exploration party in the South Tien Shan. The party conducted a general search in the spurs the eastern part of the Gissar Range in the area of five-thousandth mountains, sharp peaks which covered eternal snows. One of my routes ran in the upper Say (ravine) Ak-bai-beyob, narrow and steep whose gutter was still covered with a “snow bridge”, in local terms – tarma. On that day, on this Tarma, my Pamiri worker and I named Murod hardly rose to the upper reaches of the sai, breaking at least kilometers. There we seemed to fall into another world: remained below alpine meadows and fun raging streams. Here, at a height of three and a half thousand meters, only cliffs covered snow and ice. The cold wind blew under our windbreakers, and the sun’s rays reflected from snow and ice surfaces so blinded his eyes that I had to wear special glasses. And so, when half of the route is already left behind, the weather, as often happens in the mountains, suddenly soured. Dark low clouds covered the mountain peaks, the wind intensified, it started wet snow, which soon turned in a dry prickly snowstorm. Snow under the pressure of a gusty wind literally stuck into our faces and hands. Cold snap, visibility due the ever-increasing snowfall fell to several tens of meters. I decided to wait out the bad weather. Murod and I sat down under a large stone overhanging from the leeward side to at least somehow take shelter from piercing winds and prickly snow. And on time. On the a real snowstorm broke out before our eyes: a strong wind carried snow almost horizontally, a snowy whirlwind covered everything. Wherever Look, a white veil. Frankly, I felt uneasy. I looked at working. The same, hunched over in three doom, pressed tightly to cold stone and hiding your face from the icy wind with a hood windbreakers, as if nothing had been chewed cracker. Suddenly I am something felt something made me turn my head to the left. From of what I saw, a chill ran down my back and hair on my head and hands moved. In the veil of blizzard, white moved slowly human figure. Chilling souls instantly surfaced in my memory stories of senior geologist friends that people in the mountains is a “white climber”. So they called a ghost, the restless soul of a climber who died during the ascent. Since she wanders through the mountains and looks for her boyfriend, also a climber. Moreover most often she was seen high in the mountains on the snowy slopes of those of mountain climbers who had to endure cold nights without tents and sleeping bags or getting into terrible snowstorms on peaks when they were on the verge of death. Talked also, that the “white climber” called people behind him. Those who Agreed to go after her, they didn’t come back. In general, horror! In the short moment that I saw this ghostly woman, I managed to consider it. She wore wide white harem pants and the same white spacious windbreaker, belted with a rope, – The usual equipment of climbers of the 1950-1960s. Big hood windbreakers were thrown over his head, almost completely hiding his face. And thank God! I’m afraid to even imagine what would happen if this the climber noticed me! I glanced at the worker: does he see “white climber”? But he continued to look at his feet, chewing another cracker. I looked left again – the climber disappeared, as if she were not there. No matter how much I peered into snow milk blizzards, I never saw anyone else. Some time after that I was not let go of a chilling fear. It all seemed like a ghost climbers are about to reappear right in front of us and drag away themselves into the snowy abyss. But since nothing like this happened, I gradually came to my senses. Whats amazing snow whirl soon after the disappearance of the ghost subsided, and just as quickly, as it began. Murod and I climbed out of our shelter, kneading stiff legs. The snow has piled everything around so that continue the geological route did not make sense. Then we headed down Sayu: quickly, irregularly, fled on tarma and after some twenty minutes again were in an alpine meadow, abundantly watered by rain. The sky was clear, the sun was shining, and everything that happened there, above, I already remembered how some unreal dream. But that white figure “I wandered slowly in the veil of a blizzard, I remembered for life.”
Stones Snow
