We knew enough about watches to discern a fake and we both chuckled at the bartering. One was a Soviet watch that didn’t work and the other was a “Breitling” of unknown provenance. The bartering was equitable – in that my friends found gear that would keep them safe and experience mountains and I had trinkets from the Soviet sports programs and two watches. The teacher I was staying with was extra-keen to upgrade his climbing kit with the shiny gear I had brought from California. The fixed rope ended up being a spool of red parachute cord that offered little more than crumbs directing us towards the summit. Or maybe it signaled that when you grow up hungry you’ll always bite off more than you can chew – an axiom that alpinists live by when heading up a daunting mountain. Perhaps this diet was a clue to the success of eastern-bloc climbers who lived behind the Iron Curtain. If we were lucky, we would find the dedicated volunteer tending a stove and offering us a cup of tea, cured cubes of pork fat, and boiled potatoes with salt. The aid station was a weather-worn tent shoveled out of a small shelf that had been up for the season, melted, and refrozen into place with afternoon snow squalls. Once we gained the ridge, the final 1000 meters were on compact marble. The start began with a trot along the lateral moraine, then jogged a left and entered the ice fall that threatens the standard route. We were enticed with aid stations and fixed ropes as we were to ascend 3,000 meters from base camp to the summit. Under the centralized economy and state-sponsored sports, mountaineers would be vetted in structured competitions like this. The concept of an individual expedition, the type I had cut my teeth on – traveling to the Himalayas and climbing whatever was in my sights, funded by whatever short-term job I could find – was nonexistent for the average climber in the Soviet Union. Alpine climbing in the Soviet era was tightly regulated. To earn the vaunted Snow Leopard award, a climber had to ascend this peak – and four other 7,000-meter peaks.

The event harkened back to the Soviet-era climbing. The mountain’s name translates, deservedly, to “King Sky.” The steep marble ramparts create one of the planet’s most scenic peaks. The late Alex Lowe and I were representing the United States on Khan Tengri, which has an elevation of 7,010 meters. In 1993, I was invited to an international speed-climbing competition in the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

How to spot a fake montblanc pen