Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 28, 2024

3957m

Bayangovi, Mongolia

Tergun Bogd is more commonly known as Ikh Bogd and is the highest peak in the Gobi Desert area. This peak boasts almost 2000 m prominence as well as more than 300 km isolation, and despite the lack of permanent snow the elevation of this peak is only slightly under 4000 m. Our head guide Gangaa indicated that even the Mongolians climb this peak from time to time, but mostly in the “off season” when the glaciated peaks further to the west are no longer in condition. Petter and I came here with fresh “beta” from Rob and Deividas’ ascent in 2023 and those guys basically nailed the route without having any information beside the Gaia map and satellite images.

There are three “ultras” in the Gobi area and our plan was to slam them from west to east, opposite as what Deividas and Rob did. There was two days’ worth of driving between our previous objective, Khasagt near Altai and Tergun Bogd so we took our time. The intermediate camp was a nice one with some riverside views but more importantly, enough cell services to get some work (trip reports) done. The next day we let Manlai to do the navigation and there were at least several errors being made. None of those mistakes was major but we still wasted at least an hour fussing around. We eventually found the road that went south towards Jinst but that only positioned us on the north side of the mountain. The proper route ascends from the south so we must find a way to cross the range, as detouring all the way west or east would cost at least 3-4 extra hours. Thankfully our short-cut worked out but barely. There were some narrow and extremely rough sections that we almost couldn’t make it. Gangaa and Manlai knew this objective well that we did drive 100 vertical meters higher than Rob/Deividas’ parking, but the camping situation wasn’t the greatest. The tents had to be pitched away from the vehicles so there were some ferrying required. There was one local family living at the trail-head and they welcomed us with milk tea and etc.

The following morning we started at 6 am and the plan was to take roughly Rob and Deividas’ shorter (ascent) route both ways, but I ended up taking another way down while bagging a bonus P400m objective. The ascent route wasn’t as bad as they made it sound like, but that stretch of boulders under the upper plateau was indeed very annoying. Manlai led the way at the start but it seemed to me that he was doing too much traversing outwards. I got impatient and did a few minutes of straight-up grunting and quickly got far ahead of Manlai and Petter. I decided to do the rest of the ascent alone. I wouldn’t go too fast but I would maintain a steady pace. After the initial few hundred meters of loose shits the terrain was actually quite enjoyable on the ridge crest. There were numerous bumps and I opted to bypass most, if not all of them. Eventually there came that boulder field but the key of this game was being patient. The ridge of boulders seemed never-ending but it would eventually come to an end. I did some 3rd class moves here and there but I was sure that those could be avoided, if I dared to look for any “easier” bypass. The plod across the summit plateau was not so pleasant and took a long time. I got to the summit in 3 hours 15 minutes, took a nap and waited for almost an hour for Petter and Manlai to show up. It was a bit cold to stay for that long but at this point I had already decided to do that NW bonus peak and I needed to wait for them to inform the decision.

I had zero “beta” about the traverse between the two peaks but the contour lines suggested a fairly straightforward link-up. The descent off the NW Ridge of Tergun Bogd was a bit more involved than I thought on the upper part. The terrain was loose even by Rockies’ standard and there was some serious exposure and route-finding. At one point I came to a shear drop and the bypass on skier’s left seemed doable, but would require a lot of side-hilling. I opted to investigate the other side which was essentially a 3rd class down-sloping choss ramp with some deadly exposure. Without a decade of Rockies’ choss-neering that would have been no chance, but I was able to save considerable amount of time by descending off that way. I encountered no further difficulty afterwards and got down to the 3450-m saddle, losing 500 vertical meters in just over half an hour. The 400-m climb up the other side started off easily, but to reach the true summit I still had to deal with some scrambling and route-finding. There was a headwall guarding the summit and I simply climbed a 4th class weakness as I wasn’t patient enough to look around or to do more side-hilling.

This peak seemed to be more frequently ascended judging by the number of cairns. There was even a summit register but it was full and not useable. I wasted no time but immediately started the descent, now off the ridge on the other side. I was anticipating some nicer terrain but there were a lot of boulders and the ridge crest could not be used. I must do a shit ton more side-hilling to bypass the rugged towers and most often the side-hilling was on some painful boulders. This was okay as I was able to move efficiently through this type of terrain. It was just mentally draining. I eventually exited the shitty terrain and got some speed going. A few bumps with 10-20 m prominence were bypassed and I was able to jog the grassy slopes down towards camp. The final 400 m descent was some enjoyable scree skiing and I think I lost the final 600 m in just over half an hour, concluding the 7-hour round trip time including the hour-long stay on the main peak. I thought Manlai and Petter would be already at camp but I was not correct. I eventually saw them gingerly descending the original ridge and they eventually showed up at camp half an hour later. The lunch was then served and so was some dessert and milk tea. That local family also came over with their fat cat and that was quite fun.