Gobi climbing

Hey all

In contrast to Germany, the Mongolian winter definitely started in November already, when there were up to -36°C in the morning hours. Unfortunately I didn’t find the time to write an article for some time, so now I try to catch up before having winter holidays, which will start for me on next Tuesday.

 

Yes, thats cold!

This post is about the last “warm” days, when it was +10°C during the daytime. It seemed to me like yesterday that we went for a climbing trip to Gobi, but now it’s already 7 weeks ago. I see it as a good sign that I don’t have too much time to write, because I don't have so many boring days where I don't have anything to do. But I apologize for letting you wait that long and I will give my best to write more regularly from now on. So the following pictures were already taken on the last weekend of October. 

This is the spot, where we went climbing, roughly 400 km south of Ulaanbaatar.

And this is how we came there

Our comfortable sleeping place. And yes there was already snow.

A dream for geologists and climbers: Spheroidally weathered granite rock

Beautiful landscape

But we were not alone....

...we were regularly visited by herds of sheep, goats...

...herded by a sheppard on a motorcycle.

And of course we did some climbing

In the evening I climbed the highest point to get a good view for the sunset...

...looking to the west...

...and looking to the east.

As it was Halloween that weekend, a pumpkin could not be missing.

The clear desert night was perfect to get stunned by an incredible sky full of stars.

There were falling stars every few minutes and I've never seen the milky way that clearly. 

On the next morning, we continued climbing as soon as the rocks and our hands warmed up again.

Trying to climb up that chimney

We were having several spectators, some looked bored...

...some looked very sharply what we did.

Anyone has an idea, what kind of eagle this is? It was quite big with a wing span of maybe up to 3 m...

And one spectator had to wait too looong time to see us climb.

That was Mongolia in autumn. Next time I will show you how it looks like these day!

All the best
Malte