These two peaks came into view. The next day the whole crew made the trek up to a lovely meadow at 12,000 feet for a little first ascenting. We were the first climbers to visit, the Russians who had been in Tajikistan for 60 years, had opted for the big, snow peaks in the main range.
Bo and I had dibs and picked the highest of the rocky peaks.Jen, Chris and Mikey opted for a triangular shaped tower and Jessie and Darren set their sights on a peak just to the right of ours.
Everyone bagged summits except for Bo and me, our project was a little more than we had expected. From the camp at 12,000ft we had an arduous 2,000ft. aproach up a loose, steep gulley followed by 600 vertical feet of third classing. We then climbed 4 fun pitches only to find that we had a lot of climbing ahead of us and not enough daylight left. After a career of cold, miserable, unplanned bivys I opted to go down and come back with a new strategy.
The others had found easier lines up their climbs with only a couple of fifth class pitches.
Clearly, that would not be the case for us.
We moved our camp from 12 to 14,000 ft. and were determined to get an early start.

We left camp at 6;30, not quite as early as planned, and embarked on what would be 12 pitches of Sierra type climbing. Tricky route finding, good rock on steep sections but some debris on ledges and a couple of raps from towers that would have to be reversed on the descent- the Sierras on steroids. After every headwall another one would come into play. Finally at 4:00 PM, the ground around us dropped away and we found ourselves on the summit. The view from the previously unclimbed 16,000 ft summit made the day. The descent required the usual raps but also a couple of fifth class pitches and was a little
time consuming.
We got back to camp a half an hour after dark. 14.5 hours, 14 total pitches and 2000 vertical feet of climbing up to 5.10 with 20 ft. of A1- a great day!

Before leaving to go back to Dushanbe we had an opportunity to go to a Saturday bazaar in Afghanistan. Chris and Jen with booty.
After another arduous 15 hour drive we were treated to a Summer evening in Dushanbe before the flight home.