"Opportunities Abound" DeepSea Explorer

In Search of the "Wild Apple's of Kazakhstan"

It all started in the summer of 2016, my oldest son Chris was working for an oil service company and gets transferred to northern Kazakhstan. I being the person who knows a little about everything starting researching this country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan . Although my son was up on the northern border with Russia, there just wasn't  much up there of interest to me except for maybe some future fishing opportunities. Then it happened, I stumbled upon http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/apples-of-eden-saving-the-wild-ancestor-of-modern-apples/  and through more research I find closer to home that Cornell University has done a lot of the research. http://exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/apples/home.htm

After a couple months of pecking around the internet my interests got the better of me, and I decided I wanted some apple seeds form Kazakhstan to plant here in Colorado as I already have three apple trees in the backyard so these should grow here also.
December of 2016 I get a little zip lock baggy of 20 seeds from my son who in the meantime went back to the Congo of Africa to work. A co-worker in Kazakhstan sent these seeds to him to take back to Colorado for dear ole dad. Not knowing anything about starting apples from seed I contacted Cornell to seek information on starting these seed. They provided me with the information I needed to get going. Spring of 2017 I had 15 seedlings started. Then the question came to mind " Where exactly did these seeds come from ?
The more I looked into these wild apples the more my interest peaked and I found a link that had GPS coordinates from an expedition that was conducted by someone back in the early to mid 1990's.
http://www.sonneruplund.dk/eng/kaz%20seed%202009.html

At this point I decided I wanted to start an orchard using only these Wild Apples. Although I could obtain seeds from Cornell from their vast collection, it would not be the same as going to Kazakhstan to see for myself and bring back seeds from apples I have personally seen growing in the forest.

OK family daddy is going to Kazakhstan to pick apples and bring back the seeds, sounds a little bit crazy but what the heck.

Turns out that the country manager Dave of the oil service company whom my son works for lives in Almaty along with his wife and two children.
Did I mention that Dave is from Scotland, and sometimes trying to understand him with that Scottish accent is like me trying to understand someone speaking russian or Kazak to me since I don't speak either one.

Step 1 completed ( Local Contact ) now I need someone who can drive and knows the area and language.

Step 2 completed, Dave has a young man who provides tutoring  to his 11 year old son, and happens to like hiking along with knowing the mountains around Almaty.

Through my correspondence with Chao Thomas from USDA, I received guidance on the permits required to bring back seeds.

Step 3 With Permit in hand and contacts awaiting my arrival, off to Kazakhstan I go.

Late September 2017, on my way to Alamty, prior to leaving I sent Shyngys the young man who will be my guide a photo of me to make it easier to pick me out of the crowd when I arrive. It went off without a hitch, I get to Almaty late in the evening and meet up with Shyngys who takes me to my hotel and we arrange to meet up in the lobby at 10 am the following morning.

Day 1: Off to the Tain Shan Mountains outside of Almaty, I have picked a GPS location of the first place I want to hike to. We start our hike up to this location but now the cell service is not working for me to use my google maps well enough. I know SHOULD HAVE had a Gramin GPS tracker but not going into details, a couple of days prior to me traveling it seemed that the trip was not going to happen. Anyway we were in the right area after a good hike up through one of the saddles between two ridges, I did not see the tree I was looking for and after a couple hours up there Shyngys and I decided we were on the wrong side of the mountain which later on I was able to confirm looking at the spot I marked on my Google maps. Although I came to the realization that there might not have been any apples on the trees up that high due to being late in the season as most of the other trees have already turned colors or had dropped their leaves.

Day 2: We decided to explore places at a lower altitude which this seemed to have paid off as we found a few hill sides that had apples and pears. Of course when your driving around town and the outer suburbs one can help but notice all the apple trees growing in front and back yards of the homes. Apple Trees Everywhere.

Day 3: Still looking for a forest of apples, so we head off to a valley southwest of Almaty, up some rough road and behold there on both sides and as far ahead as we can go APPLE TREES EVERYWHERE.

This place was a pot of Gold, although I did notice that about 60-70 % of the trees already have shed their apples and then some of the trees were dropping apples already and some we had to shake the tree to get apples.
Apples of many different types. I just wonder what the apples that have already fallen and been eaten by the wildlife looked like ?.

Archie, my tree shaker.

 

Well time to get started slicing and collecting seeds.

Back at the hotel with a couple hundred apple in trash bags I begin slicing and dicing, putting 50 seeds per baggie of the different apples we collected. 1000 seeds later its time to head back to Colorado.

After returning I still wonder what type of apples I did not see and there is a place about 8 hour drive east of Almaty, which seems to be in a more arid location just like eastern plains of Colorado. Maybe next year I will find out.