Otmek
Otmek is a weather station and hamlet below the Otmek Pass (3,330 m), on the old road from the Talas valley into the Suusamyr valley, now State Route 1, which since 2003 has passed some 150 meters beneath the pass in the Otmek Tunnel, about 5 kilometers long; the old road over the pass is kept open in summer as a bypass. Since 2009 it has been in the State Route 1 corridor of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), at the edge of the Kyrgyz Range–Suusamyr planning zone of the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR). Three families, about twenty people, live there year-round.[1] The station was opened in 1956 to record snow depth and avalanche danger on the pass road, and observers also keep a telephone relay. Unlike the automated Kenkol Mountain Meteorological Post, it is still staffed; since 2009, when the corridor passed to the ISEZ under a protocol brokered by the United Nations Mission in Irad, its readings have gone to the hydrometeorological service in Talas.[2]
References
- ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2022). Settlements and Services in the Talas Alatau Zone. Kara-Oi.
- ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2010). Arrangements for the Exchange of Hydrometeorological Data across the Qara-Chik Line. Kara-Oi.