Spring (khavar)

Although the thermometer still dips close to zero each night, I can feel that winter has lost its bite. There’s enough light to go running outside after work (finally, I am released from the prison of the treadmill!). And the Hash has started up again, which means there’s always someone to run with on Tuesday evenings.

Yet spring is Mongolians’ least favorite season. The main complaint is that the weather is unpredictable. In the winter, everyone knows that each day will be the same: sunny and very cold. But in spring, the weather can be cloudy, snowing, or clear. One minute it’s jacket-off, and the next it’s hat and scarf. Another bad thing about spring is that it’s the windy time of year. In the city, garbage flies all over and airborne grit lodges in my eyes and works its way into my hair on my walk to work. Dust devils appear suddenly and careen crazily around before vanishing. Listening to the wind moan, I find myself making excuses not to go outside, even though I walked outside every day in the winter.

But who can be unhappy about the spring hiking season? Yesterday some friends decided we should walk from UB to Manshir. It’s around 13 miles through the mountains, with some tricky route finding and a highpoint of about 2200 m. Although no one had done it this early in the season before, we thought optimism was justified by the sunny and warm weather. Such impertinence! Here we are all fresh and optimistic at the start.

Here's a view of UB from the top of the first ridge.







After three hours of breaking trail through the new snow that you can see in the above photo, two of the group turned back (smart ones, they). For some reason, M. and I continued on, only to encounter deeper snow and knarly boulder fields. We spent the next 5 hours post holing through 1-3 feet of wet snow covered by breakable crust.

When we finally reached the high point, we had about two and a half hours of daylight left to get down—plenty of time provided we could find the downtrail. At this point, M’s GPS died, there was no cell phone coverage, the wind came up, and the sun disappeared behind clouds that almost certainly held more snow. And where was that downtrail? After about an hour of thrashing around in the snow without success, we were starting to consider ridiculous options like navigating down by compass (in the dark). Having made their point, the mountain god now let us find the down trail, and we made the trail head just before dark. I awoke the next morning to see the mountains covered in fresh snow.

For my last hike in UB, it certainly was a memorable one. And it was a good reminder about the unpredictability of the weather, the conditions, and life in general. I see now why the Mongolians value the predictability of winter weather—they live in a country where almost nothing can be counted on. If you live in the city, you can’t count on the power or the water being on, you can’t count on finding what you want at the store (even though you just saw it there yesterday), you can’t count on appointments being kept or cars stopping for pedestrians. In the country, you pretty much can’t count on anything but yourself and your neighbors. If that sounds overly negative, it’s only because of where I come from. The Mongolians seem to handle it all just fine.