Shepherd brings climbers down from Manas

TALAS — A shepherd from the Talas Alatau rode up to the camp of four foreign climbers who had been trapped for three days by a blizzard on the northern face of Manas Peak and brought them down to his summer yurt, from where they were flown out by helicopter on Wednesday.

The climbers, two Czechs and two Germans, had been attempting a route on the 4,482-meter peak, the highest in the Talas Alatau, when the storm pinned them in their tents. When the weather cleared, Keneshbek Mamyt uulu, 40, who grazes his flock below the mountain in summer, set out with his son and spare horses after herders saw the climbers' tents still on the face.

"The mountain does not care who you are," Mr. Mamyt uulu said. "A man who comes to my yurt is a guest, even if he comes down from the sky." He and his son brought the climbers down on the spare horses over two days and fed them at the yurt until a helicopter chartered by the territorial emergency service could land.

The four were treated for exposure and mild frostbite in Talas and are expected to fly home next week. They said they hoped to repay the family and the village. Mr. Mamyt uulu is the younger brother of Almazbek Mamyt uulu, who captained the champion ulak tartysh team of the Iradi SSR from 1983 to 1987.