Trip Reports

Mongolian Climber - 20 Jul to 4 Aug '19

Written by Leader Alex Langdon, August 2019

Mongolia is not top of the list as a travel destination for everyone and probably never will be. It has however, been on my ‘list’ for some time, so I was very happy to be finally able to get there.

To enjoy, rather than suffer this particular trip, there are a few pre-requisites:

1. Way out in front on the list is to definitely have no aversion to many hours of travelling on bumpy, dirt roads in 4x4 vehicles that are a little past their prime.

2. A very flexible attitude to the itinerary is needed; the weather in Mongolia throughout the year can range unbelievably from -50^c to +50^c. Clearly it shouldn’t get quite that chilly in the summer, but it can do everything from sunshine and high 30’s down to drizzle to heavy rain to a freezing snow storm....potentially all in one day! This affects not only the summit day weather windows, but also which days the internal flights can function within Mongolia to the Altai.

Given all that, we were unbelievably lucky that the 3 settled days that we had, happened to tie-in with our summit days and the whole team got to the top of both Khuiten and Nairandal in perfect weather.

5 out of 6 of us travelled from Heathrow via Moscow. By the time we arrived in Ulanbataar, time had moved forward by 7 hours and our ‘body clocks’ were struggling to catch up. Our first day visiting the museums in Ulanbataar was (certainly for me) a battle to stay awake. Thank goodness for Duncan who was far more perky, having ’only’ flown in from Hong Kong; we left him to be enthusiastic and ask all the smart questions!

Having been fully immersed in Mongolian culture, we then started acclimatising with a day hike. It’s been an incredible season for European Alpine flowers, but Mongolia almost trumped it with fields and fields of spectacular Edelweiss.

Journeying west to the Altai started smoothly.....but storms in Olgii meant that our short onward flight was replaced by a ‘delightful’ 7 hour night time off-road adventure drive. A total treat! We finally fell into bed for 3 hours at 4am before getting up and doing the whole thing again next day.... with the added bonus of getting stuck in a bog for an hour!

Unsurprisingly it was quite a relief to reach the park entrance. Now surrounded by snowy mountains and with horses, dogs, camels and the odd hunting eagle tied up outside the Mongolian gers (yurts) we felt that we had arrived. We trekked into Base Camp; it was comfortable, fun and sociable with a few other teams around and on a similar itinerary. Our cook was fabulous, catering for vegetarians and meat eaters (lots of meat!) equally well.

Some unhelpful weather early on (which I gather Ramiro thoroughly enjoyed!) meant that we didn’t initially get great views of our objectives; acclimatising felt rather like wandering around the Cairngorms in winter on a perfect navigation training day. Ultimately though, just when it mattered, we got 3 stellar days with good snow conditions making our two summits from High Camp a complete pleasure.

With thanks to a lovely team, who have been wonderfully mutually supportive and (mostly) managed to laugh through the less-than-perfect moments!

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