Four undergraduates travelled to the remote Tien Shan Mountains in Kazakhstan, with the objective of carrying out a programme of lightweight climbing and to explore the area generally with a view to assessing the climbing potential for future visitors to the region. Besides making a number of significant ascents, the highest of which was 15,626 feet, the group attempted a mapping project, in the light of the very inadequate maps currently available for this part of the world. They also, as a subsidiary project, collected water specimens, for diatom research at the Natural History Museum.