Archive For January 6, 2011
An unbelievable experience made possible for us by skipper Stephen and is brilliant crew. The boat was perfect for the job, the food excellent and included an after ski beer and pizza delivery to the beach one particularly fine day. We saw whales, killer whales, leopard seals, penguins, dolphins…….
The weather could not have been better and allowed us to ski a total of 17 days on the continent and outlying islands. We skied 12 small summits from 320m to 1354m in height. The snow was excellent and the photos, as always, tell the story as well as any words. We ran out of superlatives on about day 3.
Summits included Mt Scott 960m, False Mt Shackleton 1354m and 1336m skied from both summits a total of three times as the snow was so good, Mt Demaria 650m (for many the highlight of the trip), Bruce Island 320m, Mt Banck, 675m, Rojas Peak 670m, W summit of Mt Hoegh 603m, Mt Harris 1035m and the finale on Emma Island with a 45 degree ski from the summit. We also made an attempt at Mt Francais and had a few other adventures including a football match against the Ukrainians at Vernadsky and some memorable parties on board.
Not surprisingly, I love maps. The ones for Mongolia are old Soviet ones and I wasn’t supposed to have them. I can’t remember why. We were studying them in a traditional ger tent at the road head to the Tavan Bogd, Mongolia’s highest mountains. Bad weather had delayed our departure from Ulan Bataar, forced us to make a stop on our second attempt and now put down too much snow for the camels.
I have used many forms of transport on adventure ski trips but never camels and certainly never camels in the snow. They turned out to be extremely impressive beasts of burden able to carry a quarter of a ton of kit which they dropped by the lateral moraine of the Potanin Glacier at 2900m. Our home for the next 10 days.
Mongolia is not an obvious place to ski. Lots of planning, organising and complex logistics are required. Summer mountaineers to the Tavan Bogd set up advanced base camp high on the ice to climb Nairamdal 4104m and Khuiten 4374m, the highest summit in Mongolia. However, the delight of skis with their speed and ease of travel on smooth, well-filled glaciers means we avoided this effort and discomfort, travelling daily from our base camp to summit and back.
The weather did not let up and neither did the winds. We got hammered, particularly poor Lucy in the ‘festival tent’. The highlight of the trip was Nairamdal, a special point on the surface of the globe, marking as it does the border of China, Mongolia and Russia. Kazakhstan was but a short distance away.
This was the first time I used a pocket digital camera rather than the Nikon FM2 that had accompanied me on my travels for years. May 2007. I’ve never been one for new kit or new technology – I like the boring old, tried and tested stuff. However of course I now have to admit that I was a bit slow on the uptake with digital photography!!