June 1 is a holiday in Mongolia: "Women and Children’s Day." Since I had the day off, Nancy and I decided to do a hike. Ulan Baatar is surrounded by four mountains that are considered sacred. The highest is the mountain to the south, Bogdkhan Uul, which, at 2122 meters, is slightly lower than Tsetseegun Uul, at 2258 meters.
The lonely planet guide describes a hike, from the ruins of a monastery south of the mountains, over the mountains and north to Ulan Baatar. However, we had problems finding a taxi to take us to the monastery early in the morning to do this hike. Chimge was very concerned about the hike, because she said it was too dangerous, both because of problems finding the route, and because of wolves. Although we thought her concerns were overstated, we were happy to accept her suggestion that CHRD's regular driver take us to the monastery, and wait for us while we did a hike.
We did not know that there was a well established trail from the monastery to Tsetseegun. Therefore, we started by bushwhacking up a stream for about two hours, before we intersected the trail. The summit itself had several rocky tops. I climbed the two highest, which were a little exposed, but not more than Class 3 climbing. On the hike down, we once again bushwhacked, to discover a lovely ridge, before touring the monastery (the monastery was destroyed by the Soviets as part of the crackdown on Buddhism in the 1930s, but one building has been restored). We were truly fortunate, the hike back down was far prettier than the long slog down the north side of the hill which would have been followed by a long trek through the city to get back home.
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