A Durango man who spent four months whitewater kayaking in Asia on rivers the size of the Colorado has many tales to tell.
“We saw many challenging rivers in a relatively short time,” Nathan Klema said Friday. “But we got tons of help from people we met.”
Klema, his brother, Matthew, and Ben Luck who shared whitewater paddling in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Nepal, will relate their adventures Wednesday at Durango Discovery Museum. They’ll be joined by Matthew Wilson, another Durangoan, who met the group for the Nepal leg of the trip.
The Klema brothers, Luck and two other companions, Cooper Lambla and Charles King, both of North Carolina, made local headlines in October after reaching Tajikistan.
They were hiking – lugging 100-pound kayaks and food – toward the Muksu River for five days of paddling when Luck developed pulmonary edema – a severe, sometimes fatal, degree of altitude sickness.
Team members stashed their kayaks, gear and food, then backtracked, carrying Luck, to find help. At the same time, they sent an SOS through an emergency-response service, which alerted the Klema family in Durango on Oct. 1.
Such calls for help give the geographical coordinates of the sender, but no details.
Anxious hours followed as the Klemas in Durango, directly and through friends and friends of friends, searched for clues to the men’s situation. An attempt by Luck’s father to get a helicopter from a private firm into the search never materialized.
“We were oblivious to how big a deal it was,” Nathan Klema said. “But it turned out OK, and we were able to communicate with people back home.”
By the time they reached Tajikistan, the kayakers were well into their adventure, which had required extensive planning. The Klemas and Luck, all Fort Lewis College students, had put their education on hold for a year to make the trip. The Klema brothers are Colorado River guides in the Grand Canyon and have kayaked in Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
The five travelers left for the Old World at the end of July, flying to Novosibirsk (New Siberia) in Russia. A 14-hour trip by land took them to Aktash, an outpost in southern Russia near its border with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan.
In their travels, the men made the acquaintance of Vasili Porsev, who ran a kayak school and shuttle business. He proved an invaluable resource, Nathan Klema said, for his knowledge of regional geography and the range of contacts he was able to provide them.
“We used Aktash as a base of operations,” Nathan Klema said. “We paddled seven rivers in the area, then drove back to Novosibirsk to fly to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.”
There, the quintet of adventurers paddled a number of rivers, including the Sary Djaz, which dries up soon after it enters China.
“We were on the water five days, but we stopped at the border with China,” Nathan Klema said. “We had good maps and had made a lot of pre-trip calculations.”
The next five days, they spent hiking back to their starting point and then traveled overland to Tajikistan.
The areas in Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that they visited tended to be mountainous with 20,000-foot peaks not uncommon, Nathan Klema said. The landscapes were panoramas of inhospitable terrain and barren desert except for the waterways that were typically torrential rivers in slot canyons.
The kayakers carried their own watercraft and split equally the weight of the food, bought at local markets, which consisted commonly of rice, pasta, cheese, corn grits, nuts and dried fruit.
It’s unclear how the rescue helicopter reached them or who got it in the air, Klema said. There were many people involved and many phone calls made, he said.
“Someone probably has the answers,” Nathan Klema said. “But I don’t.”
After seeing Luck off in the helicopter, which ferried him to Dushanbe, the capital, for treatment, the Klemas, King and Lambla returned to where they had left their equipment.
They continued on foot to a point at 13,000 feet elevation in the Pamir Mountains where the largest glacier outside Antarctica gives rise to the Muksu River.
They paddled two days on a tributary and then three days on the main stem, taking out at a highway to avoid a physically taxing return hike.
Back in Dushanbe, they reunited with Luck, then flew to Surkhet, Nepal, where Wilson joined them to explore two river basins considered classics among kayakers, Nathan Klema said.
Surkhet, which lies between the Thule Beri and Humla Karnali rivers, was their base to explore each basin for 10 days. They paddled the Humla Karnali but took two of 10 days to hike along the Thule Beri where many towns contribute to bustling activity.
daler@durangoherald.com
