About 800 meters from us proudly towered an impregnable rock, in the sunlight of some special, golden color, which, with its snow-capped peak, as a sharp peak, ruthlessly pierced the ultramarine heavens. "The picture of oil" was complemented by a rustling mountain river beside us, which once in this place did its charming, very erotic bend.
Next stop for the night we made in the camp with the Altaic shepherds, who drove the cattle from Mongolia. The shepherds kindly provided us with two berths on the edge on huge wooden bunks, apparently designed for ten to twelve people, completely covered with greasy mattresses, which had long since lost their form and color, exuding a hideous smell of mustiness and mold. For this we, "from our bounties," gave the shepherds two cans of sprats in tomato, to which they immediately threw themselves greedily, like the natives who had never seen canned food. Grateful peasants for this piled on us a huge plate of freshly caught and well-fried grayling, which Oleg and I, thoroughly hungry, instantly ground for "both cheeks", asking for more supplements. The delicious silvery grayling was brought to the parking lot by a tall young cowboy, sunburnt in the sun to an eerie black that was fishing for a spoon-bait, without going straight down from its short, stocky Mongolian, standing on the horse's knee in the icy water on a ridge of a mountain river.
After dinner, well-fed and satisfied shepherds, as usual, wanted spectacles. Under the loud hooting of the barbarians, which, apparently, symbolized a simple "muzhik" happiness, the cowboys arranged, right here in the pen for livestock, the most real dog fights, squashing among themselves huge shaggy wolfhounds. Looking at the costumes, the natural make-up of all these extraordinary, simply amazing actors, and the surrounding mountain landscape as the scenery of such a thrilling sight of dogfight, the long forgotten images of Jack London's favorite stories about White Fang and the courageous prospectors from Klondike , Who lived in Alaska during the "gold rush". It seems to me that little has changed since then in the way of life of these so surprisingly similar people living on such different continents and talking in such different languages.
Two days later we finally reached that sacred place, because of which the whole "cheese-boron", the great canyon of the Peschanaya River, was being conceived. About its approach, we learned already 2 hours before entering the gorge - a terrifying roar from the water falling from above stood on the whole district within a radius of 5 km.
We begin on the catamaran slowly and smoothly, just like a woman, enter the canyon, still not even knowing what awaits us ahead. Caught at the top point of a falling river, clamped on all sides by black granite rocks, I was simply horrified to see Peschanaya swiftly disappearing somewhere very deep down. From this point of view, there was a complete sense that there was simply no exit from the canyon (apparently, because of this visual effect, the gorge on Peschanaya was called "grand canyons" at the peak of the Grand Canouon American). Then I manage with great difficulty to make out a narrow gap between the rocks on the right, into which the capricious river "dived", and where, in the end, it drags us, madmen. And now we are already caught up in the powerful water flow of the river, with a roar that carries our catamaran towards the four-hour nightmarish "meat grinder" of the "big", but not American, but Altai canyon. Ahead of us was an unforgettable spectacle - a test - a continuous cascade of rapids, which for a single moment made it impossible not only to relax, but at least just to catch our breath.
The oars had to work continuously, so much so that the hands were finally numb with fatigue. Despite our "titanic" efforts, the river did with us all that it wanted, exposing our absolute, total nonentity. Now, two decades later, I understand that it is our duty to live only to the God of Ra, who, in fact, arranged for us this transcendental test of water. There were times when we were just doomed to throw the oars, completely abandoning ourselves to the will of the crazy stream, and we, after a powerful throw to the next "barrel" (the author - a mini-waterfall on the mountain river), when we head down to the bottom again and again plunged into Boiling foam, the catamaran was suddenly thrown out from under the water to the surface, miraculously avoiding, as it were, such an inevitable, terrible blow to the rock, threatening imminent death. Nothing really depended on us here. Ra completely gave us to the river.
However, Oleg is already very tired and more and more often throws an oar, dangerously substituting the left side of the catamaran for blowing a roaring stream, trying to knock us into a boiling foam. I scream in frenzy at him, because the second gorge of the canyon begins with the most powerful water.
Suddenly, we are blocked by a huge rock of pinkish color - the "Pink Boom", which extends to the right of us almost half the river and is famous for the so-called "imitation of the clamp" (that is, pressing water to the rock according to all the laws of physics, as it should be , But its, for some reason, no). Here the river again makes a big loop around the rock, turning 180 degrees, and here it is, the most terrible, especially in the "big" water, the threshold is "Jaws", it is "Abramych". For
