Almaty

Almaty is Anatoli Boukreev’s adopted home and the center of a difficult professional transition: when state support for mountaineering faltered, he had to leave in search of work, while continuing to train and identify with Kazakhstan and its climbers. The city stands in the account both for the life he might lose if he waited for opportunity and for the connections that continued to draw him back.

Home and a changing mountaineering world

Boukreev’s attachment to Almaty is bound to the upheaval following the Soviet Union’s collapse. Kazakhstan struggled to finance its mountaineering programs, and accomplished climbers who had once worked within a state-supported system faced poverty or took jobs far from their ambitions. Boukreev understood this loss not as an abstraction but as a threat to his own career: he believed that if he waited for opportunity to find him in Kazakhstan, his high-altitude climbing career could be finished.

The account recalls an earlier low point after his successful 1994 ascent of Makalu. While the American members of the expedition flew home, Boukreev remained in Kathmandu’s cheapest hotel, selling climbing gear to afford a ticket back to Almaty. The episode gives the city a double meaning: it was home, but returning there did not guarantee the means to keep climbing. Even after the rigors of Makalu, he had gained weight on expedition food, while some American counterparts had lost as much as nine kilograms. His material circumstances, rather than a lack of ambition or experience, constrained his next steps.

Leaving to find work

In 1995 Boukreev had accepted an invitation to join a Kazakh expedition to Manaslu, an 8,000-meter peak he had not yet climbed and one he hoped to add to his record of the world’s 8,000ers. When the team’s leader, Ervand Ilinski, announced that the expedition lacked funding and would be postponed until spring 1996, Boukreev learned of the cancellation just before leaving for Nepal. He decided not to stay in Almaty waiting for another opening and flew to Kathmandu to look for guiding work or a place on another expedition.

That search did not immediately produce paid work. In Kathmandu he encountered Georgian climbers he had previously climbed with in the Pamir and Tien Shan ranges. They invited him to join their Dhaulagiri expedition, but only if he covered his own expenses and share of the Nepalese government’s permit fee. Despite limited resources, he accepted. The contrast between the canceled Kazakh expedition and the Georgians’ funded attempt shows how the new financial conditions shaped his choices: the invitation offered access to the mountains, but at a personal cost.

Training and return

Leaving Almaty did not mean abandoning its role in his climbing life. In preparation for the 1996 season, Boukreev had trained there with two speed ascents of 4,000-meter peaks each week. That preparation, together with more than five months in the Himalayas during the preceding year and ascents of three 8,000-meter peaks, including Everest in 1995, allowed him to plan a five-day trek to Everest Base Camp. He contrasted his schedule with the ten to twelve days planned for clients arriving from sea level, who needed more time to adjust to altitude.

After back-to-back climbs of two 8,000-meter peaks, Boukreev returned to Kazakhstan for a short rest and to see his widowed mother. Following a New Year’s celebration with friends, he left for Russia to negotiate with Poisk over oxygen for Scott Fischer’s expedition. His subsequent work abroad arose from the same conditions that had sent him away in the first place, but Almaty remained the place to which he returned for family, rest, and a sense of belonging.

Identity and significance

Although born in Russia, Boukreev strongly identified with the Kazakhs of his adopted country. In St. Petersburg, while working on the oxygen negotiations, he reflected on the joke that Kazakhs, Georgians, Ukrainians, and other outsiders were left selling shish kebabs while Russians got foundry jobs. He was relieved not to be standing on a street corner tending a brazier, and joked that his identity as a high-altitude climber qualified him for minority status of his own. The remark joins professional identity to social displacement: his prospects depended on international climbing work, but his sense of home remained tied to Kazakhstan.

Almaty therefore anchors a recurring tension in Boukreev’s account. It is where he trained, rested, celebrated with friends, and hoped to sustain a climbing life; it is also where the weakened support system made waiting dangerous. His departures are not a rejection of home but a response to the shrinking possibilities there, while his returns preserve the personal and national ties that professional opportunity alone could not replace.