TAJIKISTAN - Conquering the Muksu River -

Deep in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan lie the glacial torrents of the Muksu River; the last descent needed for Tomass Marnics to complete the “Whitewater Triple Crown” of the former Soviet Union. But conquering the Muksu would not be easy. The travel, the food, the topography, and of course, the whitewater, took everything his international team of nine had.

Words by Philip Baues

Standing atop 4500 meters (14,800 feet) should have felt like an achievement. We had just crossed the Takhtakorum Pass high in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains to finally reach the river. Instead, my lungs felt like they were about to burst and the kayak on my back felt like it weighed a million pounds. I was dehydrated from a battle with diarrhea, but I knew that most of our crew had it even worse.“Why, for God’s sake,” I wondered,“Are we doing this?” But let’s start at the beginning. Our captain, Tomass Marnics, came up with the idea to paddle the Muksu River several years ago. After we successfully navigated the Bashkaus and put our names in the “Book of Legends” in Siberia back in 2010 and ticked off the Saryjaz River in…

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Kayak Session (Digital) - 1 Issue, Fall 2018

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