How to get there:
This is indeed the main challenge with this peak. It is sort of far away from
everything. Once you get to a reasonable trailhead the
hike to this summit is quite easy. We planned to drive to a local
saddle near location N44.8327, E095.2466, elevation near 3500 meter, but
the road got quite rocky and we decided to camp at location
N44.82107, E095.28562, elevation 3180 meter.
This would mean that we would have a slightly longer hike with
more vertical ascent, but still not much more than 600 meter.
Route description:
From our trailhead/camp, proceed directly towards the shallow saddle that
can be seen at the horizon. This saddle may not be obvious, head for the left
side of the high ridge as seen from the trailhead, check your map.
As soon as you reach this saddle, the peak will come into view. First, cross a pretty
flat area, descending perhaps 10 meter, then ascend the peak. This last uphill is quite
short as you gained most of the elevation when ascending to the shallow saddle (horizon).
There is a pile of rocks
(unfinished cairn) that marks the summit.
Comments:
Here is a quick summary of peaks climbed in Mongolia August 2024.
The day before climbing Sutay, we opened
the discussion that had been pending for a few days with Gangaa.
As we progressed with our schedule. we moved more and more ahead with respect
to the dates. That is, we now had a buffer of 5 days. The trip name was 34 days
in Mongolia and obviously, we could not end up with a week back in Ulaan Baator.
In fact, all peaks had been day hikes with the exception of Turgen. Gangaa had
reserved 2 days for several peaks and therefore, we were now ahead of the plan.
The obvious proposal was to include the only remaining ultra when ignoring the
one on the Russian border, Ich Obo. This peak had originally been taken out
due to its isolated location.
Gangaa clearly understood that we needed to spend some more unscheduled time and
she was positive to our suggestion to use perhaps 3 days to climb Ich Obo. The climb
itself looked short and easy but the travel would take at least 2 days. However,
our two drivers were not happy. This trip already involved a lot of driving and
adding Ich Obo would mean at least 500 additional kilometer on rough, dirt tracks.
After a bit of negotiations we all agreed to a plan. We would pay for the extra
fuel needed to drive all these extra kilometer, this seemed fair as this was not
included in the original plan. In addition, we would give the two drivers a
generous "tip" to acknowledge their extraordinary effort.
With this all concluded and agreed, we went to sleep, preparing for our ascent the
next morning.
We left our camp at the base of Sutay around 1230, having already a successful
ascent in the morning. Our first stop
was in the small town Tonkhil, where we
filled all fuel tanks to capacity.
A long drive followed all on tracks. We finally declared a camp at location
N45.36235, E094.68395, elevation about 1500 meter. We were now 76 kilometer
from the summit of Ich Obo. The plan being to reach its base the following day.
We first drove down to a paved road, then followed this about 13 km east, before
taking a dirt road accessing a huge, fairly flat area.
Steven and I were in agreement on the driving route, a track/road that would get
us close to the peak. This drive was, however, quite a huge arc, not anything like
a straight line towards the peak approach.
This showed as Manlei (and Gangaa) suddenly deviated by following a track that went
more left, while Steven and I directed our car the way we had planned.
Such a split should obviously not happen, it soon became clear that the two
tracks would not merge back together. After about 30 more minutes, we stopped and our
driver hiked a local hill from where he tried to see the other vehicle with his
binoculars. Eventually, he got in touch with Manlei using his walkie-talkie.
All this took time, more than one additional hour wasted before Manlei and Gangaa
finally backtracked then succeeded to drive across and get reunited with us.
We drove past some normade camps, then started ascending up the valley. Here, the road/track
became increasingly rocky and we decided to stop and camp. The plan had been to drive to
about 3500 meter, however, this was
still fully acceptable. We camped at 3180 meter (see above).
The time (Ulaan Baatar) was 1430, good weather. After such a long drive, we all wanted
to stretch legs.
Thus, we started at 1445, it was clear that this hike would be pretty
short. Summit at 1555, so a net vertical gain of 625 meter in 1:10, - good pace at nearly
4000 meter of elevation.
Steven and I had been pretty fast, Manlei took a route that crossed one of the smaller
hills along the way, not the very quickest.
He arrived after about 10 minutes.
We spent 20 minutes on top.
A pretty desolate landscape, gentle
rolling hills with mostly rocks.
We walked back to camp
in about the same time, another ultra,
this one in a very remote location.
Another nice and quite relaxed evening with high class cuisine prepared by
Gangaa. We wondered if we would see the other team that we had met on Sutai, but
no signs.
The next morning, we started our long (full day) drive back to the town
of Altai. We noticed a single car parked a bit lower than our camp. It turned
out that our friends had suffered a car break down and now travelled in a single
vehicle. They had started their ascent and they could later report that they had
seen our camp before we cleared it that morning.
