Archa-Bashi Glacier on the Alai Range
The Archa-Bashi Glacier is large and dendritic, located at the western foothills of the Tandy-Kul peaks (5539 m) and Snowy Shelter (5529 m) — both geographically belong to the High Alai. The polluted morainic trunk of Archa-Bashi has carved a distance of almost 6 km between the sheer walls of the spurs. The end of the glacier is situated at an altitude of approximately 3000 m. The gentle firn fields of the glacier's branches lie at the ridges, like on balconies, surrounding its body, where steep hundreds-of-meters-high icefalls cascade down. The most powerful of them (the main branch of the glacier) is located on the spur that separates the Archa-Bashi and Yashilkul valleys.
The beginning of the spur originates from the peak of the Cosmonauts (5320 m), and in its first eastern spur is the complex Archa-Bashi pass, leading to the left lower tributary of the Archa-Bashi Glacier. The entire eastern slope is well visible from the beginning of the Archa-Bashi tongue. From the height of the pass, the expanses of the upper reaches of the Archa-Bashi Glacier open up. To the southeast, passes in the zone of the Cosmonauts plateau can be seen, to the southwest - the five-thousand-meter massif in the Alai Range (Cosmonauts Peak), and to the north - a short ridge of the spur with the Karuzo and Uchebny passes.
Directly (in the direction) to the south is a very steep icefall cascading from the Cosmonauts plateau. The ascent to the pass, although steep, is free of icefall accumulations. The wind-swept Karagushkhan glacier in the upper reaches with the same-name pass lies slightly west of the Cosmonauts plateau. Its steep narrow icefall cascades at an angle among rocky outcrops onto the Archa-Bashi Glacier. A well-trodden path leads to the Karagushkhan Glacier through the rocks between the mentioned icefalls.
