Kurai Steppe

The Kurai steppe is a flat intermontane basin at around fifteen hundred metres on the Chuysky Trakt, dry, treeless and grazed, and its point is the view: the North Chuya ridge rises directly across it in a wall of snow and glacier, with Aktru at 4,044 metres and a line of peaks either side, seen across twenty kilometres of level ground with nothing in the way. The basin itself carries something remarkable that is easier to see from the air or from a slope: giant current ripples, mounds up to fifteen metres high and several hundred apart, left by catastrophic outburst floods when ice-dammed lakes in the Chuya basin failed at the end of the last glaciation and released water at rates comparable to the largest floods known on earth. They are among the best-preserved examples of the phenomenon anywhere. Kurai village is the access point for the Aktru valley.

What you actually see

• The North Chuya wall - a snow and glacier ridge seen across twenty flat kilometres.
• The giant ripples - flood-formed mounds up to fifteen metres high across the basin.
• The outburst floods - evidence of ice-dam failures among the largest floods known.
• The dry basin - treeless grazed steppe at around fifteen hundred metres.

When to go

June to September; winter gives the clearest air and the sharpest views but severe cold. Half a day, or a base for the Aktru valley.

Honest expectations

The giant ripples are hard to make out at ground level - they read properly from a slope or the air. Nothing to do here but look; facilities are in the village. Wind across the basin is constant. Winter temperatures drop below minus thirty.

Nearby

The Aktru valley is south; Kyzyl-Chin and the Chuya steppe are further along the Trakt.