How to get there:
The town of Uliastai, served by the airport Otgontenger, is a good point
of reference. This is west of the mountain.
There is an "official" trailhead on the north side. We drove in
from the west. A 4WD of good quality is esssential. The approach
drive involves a river crossing and follows a pretty rough track.
For some reason our driver and guide decided to stop about 3 kilometer
before the end of the road. Thus, our trailhead was located at
N47.65941, E097.47745, elevation about 2514 meter.
A better trailhead would be at or near location N47.65264, E097.51909,
elevation just below 2600 meter, where the 4WD track ends.
This would make the summit hike about 6 kilometer shorter.
Route description:
Follow the 4WD track until it ends and continue along a smaller trail
going into the basin at the end of the valley.
Two small rivers may
be crossed by boulder hopping.
As soon as the peak appear
on your right, the rest of the route may be seen. A big ridge starting at
the base of the summit cone, connects nicely down to the valley floor.
Climb this ridge, there are two steps with a level section (even a small
down hill) in between. Staying slightly left of the highest route on the
upper part will conect nicely with the (normal)
route coming up the valley
from the north-east.
From here, ascend the remaining 750 vertical meter of unpleasant talus staying
fairly close to the left hand side when going uphill. Gradually, the slope relents
and becomes almost flat when reaching the snow/ice (early August 2024). A rock band
guards the steep side on climbers
right all the way to the summit rock.
The snow/ice near the summit can
be walked safely, staying left of the rocks.
Comments:
Here is a quick summary of peaks climbed in Mongolia August 2024.
We (Adam, Steven and I), had a flight from Bergen, Norway, via Oslo and Istanbul
arriving in Ulaan Baatar at 0715 on August 1st. Our connecting flight to
Otgontenger Airport was about 1.5 hour late, but we finally stepped out on
Mongolian soil shortly
after 1400. A pretty long contiuous travel, starting
at 0600 on July 31. There is a 6 hour time shift between Norway and the capital
of Mongolia, Ulaan Baatar.
We were met by our cook Sarangerei, our local guide Manlei and a driver. We would
use two Landcruisers, well proven vehicles.
After some last minute shopping in the small town of Uliastai, we drove to the
trailhead described above. At the very first tricky spot on the access track,
we discovered that one could not shift our landcruiser into LOW mode. This should
obviously have been tested and fixed before they drove from Ulaan Baatar. Our driver
did however do a pretty good job, compensating for the lack of low by charging
the truck a bit more agressively forward in first.
We arrived at camp
around 1930, a nice evening concluding our long journey.
Manlei was concerned that doing this peak as a single day, car to car hike would
be too long. He had never done it this way before. Adam was concerned about his
thin air performance after his recent trouble on Ararat, thus he decided to just do
a shorter test-hike the next day. It was agreed that Steven and I would start already
at 0400, still dark.
We did as planned, daylight came already after 45 minutes and I cached my light. This first
part continued along the 4WD road, we never completely understood why we could not have
driven 3 more kilometer. Manlei knew the local trails, and we made good progress up the
slopes to the ridge.
We had a couple of t5-10 minutes breaks along the way,
still made it to the summit
at 0940, so 5:40 up. Absolutely, a fairly tough start taking into account that we
essentially had been travelling without any stop/sleep since Norway. Good views on
a nice summit.
Still, we left after 10 minutes, knowing that we had a long way to walk back.
Also, the descent down the first long slope was unpleasant for me. No trail,
meadium sized rocks that all moved and were unstable.
This initial descent took me 1:50, happy that Steven and Manlei took several
breaks waiting. What remained was now a 3:20 walk in
much easier terrain. We were
back by 1500, so a total trip time of 11 hours.
Back at camp, Adam had not yet returned. We had talked about driving
back out, that clearly could not happen. After dinner, when it started
to get dark, still no Adam. We were certainly concerned, not a good way
to start a trip, first day when people still do not know each other.
We decided that Steven should climb the closest mountain having
more than 100 meter of prominence and carry 2 torches. However, just minutes after
he set out, we spotted Adam coming along the 4WD road. Fortunately, we were able
to call Steven back.
Adam was not too happy with his hike despite being out quite many hours. We still
agreed that he should come along as planned on our next peak. We would have a
full day of driving before our next planned hike.