Mongolia. The mere name conjures up images of colossal emptiness, endless rolling steppe, and life of the most primitive kind. Long harsh winters, a barely adequate diet and a perpetual struggle for survival make the Mongolian people some of the most humble and enduring folk on the planet. The country has long been avoided by most travellers, possibly due to lack of knowledge and the feeling that just about anything could happen once you touch down…

 

 

Which is about right; Mongolia’s not for the average tourist. The country seems keen to swallow you upon arrival! Make no mistake; the country is gigantic. It’s about the size of France, Spain and Germany combined, with a population of less than three million, and the empty space contained within is simply breathtaking. The people are nomadic, their possessions few, and yet they retain an honest dignity that the west has all but lost.

Our trip in June 2001 was to discover the fabled Mongolian gritstone. Does it really exist? We failed in that quest, but we did find a huge amount of granite, and put up a lot of routes - all traditional, with no bolts. The team consisted of Seb Grieve, Tim Emmett, Neil Gresham, Grant Farquhar and Mike Robertson. It was to be a life-changing experience.

1  The journey: Neil and Grant. Aeroflot are world-renowned for, shall we say ‘interesting’ air service, and the 14-hour stopover at Moscow airport certainly consisted of that. The prices were sky-high, Seb randomly broke a few plates, apricot-flavoured vodka was consumed in considerable quantities, and the flight captain was duly informed…

2  Upon arrival: the capital city of Ulaan Baatar proved to be highly stimulating. This shot shows us getting to grips with the problem of deciding which of Mongolia’s remote, unsigned roads to tackle first. The capital’s cafes and elderly cracked-screen buses proved delightful, with the (two) nightclubs possibly crazier than a box of frogs. It just might be advisable to take a look at Nick Middleton’s travelogue The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia. You have been warned.

3  Open air pool games? You bet. There’s not a lot that doesn’t take place on the dusty, unruly streets of Ulaan Baatar. Even our hotel turned out to be a knocking shop, and the market down the road sold everything from washing machine bearings to dead cats.

 

 

4  A road trip takes quite a bit of planning. Here Seb Grieve is seen amassing information about fuel cans, prior to our first foray into the wilds. If only we knew what we’d let ourselves in for…

 

 

5  The start of it all – the endless, confusing trails and ruts that weave their way about this gigantic country. If you laid all the tarmac roads end to end in Mongolia, you wouldn’t have enough to cover it from east to west. Our host Gal is shown here on the left, along with his brother-in-law. Gal is, quite literally, an ex-rocket scientist, and he was followed around by the KGB for some years after his ‘retirement’. These days he runs trucks for such folk as us. So if you’re in need of a guide…

 

6  Rural Mongolians are still nomadic, and simply wander the country, choosing to settle in one place for a few months at a time. There are very few rules, and the endless steppe is considered pretty much public property. This shot shows a Ger village east of the capital.

 

7  Tim is seen here in the background wrestling with a rather large dinosaur. So Mongolia even has a dinosaur park, along with some crazy tales about some guy called Genghis Khan, who was rumoured to have murdered a whole lot more people than Hitler. Khan’s grave has yet to be discovered, despite some fairly extensive and far-reaching excavations.

 

8  The discovery of ‘Gorky Park’ by our team was a day of much rejoicing, and preceded some ten days of frantic new-routing. This slice of parkland just two hours drive east of the capital gave us an eclectic mix of domes, faces and cracks, along with some of the best camping in the known universe.

 

9  The team assembled with their tents at Gorky Park, known more correctly as Gorkhi-Terelj Park. I think. This grassy col was to be our favoured camping location in Mongolia.

 

10  Our first new route at Gorky Park, a testing, hard-to-gear crack on one of the domes near our camp spot. Neil named the route Sapphire Crack (E5 6b), after our night out at the ‘Sapphire Club’. Don’t ask.

 

11  The author goes on-sight with Geri Halliwell (E4 5c), on the Richard Ger boulder, Gorky Park. The slanting ramp to the right is E3 5c, and the rotten, rickety ladder on the far right of the shot is the real crux – probably about an E6 down-climb.

 

 

12  Seb is seen here on-sighting the groove of Problem Passenger (E4 5c), at Gorky Park. Seb’s no stranger to the vagaries of vodka intake, but he certainly surprised us with his nodding-dribbling dog impression on the Aeroflot flight…

 

13  Ah, a slab, and a right good one. Tim cleaned this beastie prior to the ascent, and it’s a brilliant, classic scare, at E5 5c. He dreamt of nothing else but dinosaurs the night before his ascent – Dreaming of Dinosaurs it is, then.

 

14  Karabiners, cams and nuts? It’s all nonsense to your average Mongolian. Timmy tapes up in the rearground. 

 

 

15  Much debate about the grade of this monster crack, but in the end, Yosemite rules applied. Get the tape gloves pasted on, and munch y’self some decent painkillers. This image made the cover of Climber magazine in October 2001, but I haven’t heard of any repeats as yet… Neil, and the ground-up Ulaan Battered (E5 6b).

 

Author - Mike Robertson

 

Part Two of this article coming soon.