Trip Reports

Mongolia Climber - 19 Jul to 3 Aug '09

Written by Leader Ian Barker, August 2009

An unfortunate injury to Mungo Ross at the last minute gave me an opportunity to re-visit one of my favourite expedition venues. Ten of us met at Heathrow airport & after doing battle with the ice-maidens of Aeroflot over excess baggage, we were soon on our way.

It’s amazing how Ulan Baatar has grown over the last decade with sky-scrapers popping up all over the place, but it still holds onto its’ shabby charm as the capital in the middle of nowhere.

We had 2 action-packed acclimatisation days as we climbed holy mountains (Mt Tsetseguun, 2,256m), trekked through the stunning rock formations of Terelj National Park, just 65km from the capital & visited the sites of UB – including Gandan monastery that houses reputedly the 2nd largest free-standing Buddha in the world - & what a whopper it is! We also met up with our final group members, Charles who had travelled to UB independently & Uskoo, our local mountain guide who is also a local celebrity being the first Mongolian to climb Everest.

On the morning of day 5, with UB airport still in darkness, we raced the sun into the sky on our flight to the far west of the country and the isolated town of Bayan Olgii. Dawn revealed the most amazing landscape as saw-toothed shadows stretched across the Mongolian interior. We flew across deserts, cruised past isolated snow-capped peaks & passed over a number of inland seas, whose waters are never destined to reach the distant ocean. Search as you might, we could see no sign of towns or villages – occasionally we may spot a thin ribbon-like road that just seemed to peter out at the head of a valley or a collection of Gers (nomadic tents).

The flight left us all with an ever-lasting impression of how vast Mongolia is & a desire to explore the interior further.

We were met in Olgii by the rest of our support team. It was good to see that Sandagash & Jenna, the cooks from my previous visit to the Altai Mountains would also be accompanying us on this expedition. I had no doubts that the food would be of a first class standard. It’s only 190km from Olgii to the gates of Tavan Bogd National Park but the journey required 5 sturdy Russian-built jeeps to deal with the torturous but spectacular route we would take. They made light work of the many stream crossings & steep narrow passes that we constantly climbed over. We stopped for lunch in the middle of a broad-sided valley surrounded by mountains as far as the eye could see. A small herd of bactrain camels (the ones with 2 humps) drifted past in the distance. We were visited by a small Kazakh shepherd boy on horse-back to see what all the fuss was about – he starred on in bewilderment & was given an orange by Sandagash for his troubles. I’m not quite sure how the scene must have looked as 12 of us sat down for a meal at table covered with a table-cloth in the middle of nowhere. Did he see a scene from the grand days of Victorian exploration or a view of a Monty Python sketch?!

We spent the night at the National Park gate, taking dinner in the colourful ger of the park ranger & his family.

The next day we awoke to a bright but snow-covered terrain – almost 3inches had fallen during the night. We loaded the camels & set off for a leisurely 5hr walk into base camp stopping for lunch along the way. It’s a dramatic walk & as we crested the final ridge stretching before us was the majestic sweep of the Potanina glacier ringed by the high peaks of the Altai Mountains. Nestling to the side of the moraine with commanding views we could just pick out the 2 gers of our base camp. We settled into our comfortable base camp taking our meals in the ger & being warmed by the dung-fueled pot-bellied stove that roared away in the centre of the tent. The food served by our cooks was delicious, we worked up good appetites with acclimatisation walks to the Russian border, glacial travel training & an ascent of a 3,600m peak behind the camp.

It had been our intention to make a high camp beside a large rock outcrop in the middle of the glacier so we could have easier access to the high peaks of Mt Khuiten & Mt Nairandal, but unfortunately we had problems with the stoves supplied by our agent the UB & had to make attempts on the peaks from base camp.

1am saw us having breakfast in the ger beneath a star-studded sky & by 2am we were on our way with only the Milky Way to keep us company. We reached the rocky outcrop on the glacier as a red dawn broke in the east. The weather by now had been slowly deteriorating as we had climbed higher & cloud was now covering the summit of Khuiten & slowly descending the mountains’ flanks – so a decision was made to attempt the easier Nairandal. In worsening weather we all made it to the summit of Nairandal also known as Friendship peak because at its summit the borders of Russia, China & Mongolia meet. Even though we didn’t have much of a view, everyone was very happy to be able to stand in such a magical place. We quickly descended towards base camp, chased down the mountain by increasing snow storms. Once back at base camp, we really felt we had seized success on the peak from the jaws of the worsening weather.

Conditions remained unsettled for the next few days so we were unable to make an attempt on Khuiten, but 8 of the team did manage to climb Mt Malchin (4,050m). We left base camp on a bright & sunny morning accompanied by the pack-carrying camels – a sight that surely hasn’t changed since the times of Chinggis Khan. We had a further 2 nights at the comfortable Palace Hotel in UB & sampled a host of good eateries. One of the cultural highlights of the trip was a traditional song & dance evening, much enjoyed by the group – in particular the Mongolian throat singing that produced a range of harmonic sounds beyond our imagination! So impressed were the group by this demonstration that they felt they had to try it out for themselves on the bus back to the hotel (top tip, don’t give up your day jobs)!

A wonderful expedition with a great set of clients who took the rough & smooth of the journey in their confident stride.

Ian Barker, Expedition Leader « Previous report | Next report »

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