chapter nine - The Epic Hike

The ‘green trail’ is what we followed first. So called for the green paint markers splashed every km or so on sporadic tree trunks. This was a good idea. Trails are always a good idea. It seemed to be mostly level, not in the least treacherous, and put us a few minutes ahead of schedule. Our destination was a 2,000 meter (6,500 foot) hill about 8 km (5 miles) away. It butted up against one end of the mountain range we had spied the previous day on our boat ride. It was marked by a curious zig-zag line leading to the top. Zig-zag, I knew what that meant.

It wasn’t long before we came to a clearing and made a break with the green trail. The events and sights following this break are a bit muddled in my memory. I can’t quite discern which came first or after, so I’m not going to bother you with specifics, just generalities.

I remember walking up. A lot, actually. Up, up, up – that seemed to be the one and only direction our bodies were propelled. It was a never ending landscape of steepness. But the further we walked and the more up we went, the more amazing everything seemed to become. Huvsgul opened to a vast sheet of glassy turquoise, valleys sunk into deep greens, and the hills and mountains were draped in hazy blues. Remarkable! I’d never seen anything like it.

If we weren’t walking up, we were walking through – through dense piney forest, springing along the spongy needled floor, hurdling fallen trees or thorny bushes. Through soggy marsh-lands that completely soaked my shoes, sidestepping animal poo all the way – yak poo, mostly. And they must have been big yaks if I remember correctly.

Up, through, up, through for hours as if we were a bunch of needles sewing up the landscape. Eventually, after plodding out of a marshy bit, the land widened and the Beast presented itself - all 2,000 meters of him. There was talk about following a tree line straight up the side clear to the top. Something died in me after hearing that and I quietly mourned, trying my best to look eager. We talked about whether or not to eat lunch before tackling the Beast. We decided to fuel up instead on a bit of chocolate and keep lunch till the top as a reward for our hard work.

So it began. We picked up walking sticks from the layer of fallen branches in the sparse forest at the foot of the Beast. By the time we reached the tree line and gazed toward its ending point at the top – it became clear that walking the zig-zag road was indefinitely a smarter move. However, Elisabeth had gone on ahead of us while we were eating chocolate, following the old plan straight up the side. So Ed, Charli, Tom and I set to work on the zig-zag and Ian followed after his wife.

One of the things I enjoy about hiking is the sense of accomplishment. Some hills seem too impossible, the incline too ridiculous and all you think is, how can this be remotely possible? But when you reach the top and see how far you’ve come and take stock of your current circumstances, you realize you’re not dead or too exhausted to tackle another hill. You wonder, Man! Did I just do all that? How? Let’s see if I can do it again

That was how I felt upon reaching the top of 2,000 meters. That and an overriding need to lie down. Elisabeth and Ian had made it there before us by just a few minutes and were setting things up for lunch (ramen noodles again – but this time the packages came with spoons). We happily stuffed ourselves and took in everything we possibly could: the clean, sun-baked air, the greens and blues of lake, tree and hillside, Huvsgul, her mountains and valleys, and the contentedness of being with good friends. I was joyously looking forward to walking down and back.

As it turned out, down and back did not occur in the same way up and through did. I naively expected we’d walk back the same route we took forward. Silly me – remember, you’re in the company of real hikers. So instead, we walked about two miles the opposite direction before beginning our slow decent and journey back to camp. Tom, anxious to get back to his wife (who is pregnant and didn’t come with us), broke from us early on and ran the whole way back.

The events of this return journey are again, somewhat muddled. But these are the things I clearly remember:

Down, down, down. I’m not sure which is worse: a steep incline or a steep decline. They both kind of suck. But that’s the direction our bodies were now propelled. The goal was to get back to the forest and pick up the green trail somewhere near the beach. Ah, the green trail! A relatively non-laborious walk and the quickest way back to camp, I remember that!

Before we came across any hint of the green trail though, a good portion of bushwhacking through forest had to be done. By this time, it felt like my hip joints had aged 50 or 60 years and my legs were on fire. My pack had also somehow increased in weight by 10 pounds. We had also almost run out of water and it was the hottest part of the afternoon. I hated bushwhacking. Why couldn’t we have just gone back the same way we came? It was a tough battle fighting off the grumps.

Eventually we met with the lake and filled our dry water bottles, then picked the green trail back up (joy!). But what we remembered as a smooth, kindly coast, had violently tipped itself in our absence and had become a horrible series of upward climbs. Was this even the same trail?! I don’t think my 80 year old hips can take it, I thought to myself. But they did. They had to. Ed and Charli and I whizzed through the green trail as fast as we possibly could. Ian and Liz had taken a more leisurely pace. For me, at least, it was absolutely no longer about the journey anymore, it was all about the destination. The quicker you go, the sooner it will all end.

And it did. When we hobbled through the front gate of our ger camp, we spied Tom lying dead-like on the steps of the shower house waiting for the hot water. Emily was sitting beside him. He had come into camp about an hour ahead of us and was clearly out of gas. He actually did run the whole way back. When I returned to my ger, I checked the clock: 7:13 pm. It had been nearly 10 hours since we departed that morning. I laughed to myself. 10 miles in 10 hours. Ian and Liz hobbled into the ger shortly after.

We looked like a bunch of zombies at dinner that night, except Emily, of course. It took a lot to even dunk a teabag. But I think we all agreed that it was a great way to spend our last day at Huvsgul. Well worth it. We treated ourselves to fizzy sodas and went to bed early in nice, warm gers.

chapter eight - The Boat Ride

If you’re just joining us now, this is a brief summary of what you’ve missed: a train ride with snorers, Jimmy and his man boobs, roadless road trip, swindling, frustrating shower, delicious soup, treacherous goat path.

If you’re still with me, God bless you. There are only two more chapters to go and then we all can get on with our lives.

********
You can’t go to a lake without getting in to it. This rule is suspended, though, when the water is too flipping cold to even stick in a finger. Such is the case with Huvsgul. It may be pretty but it’s also frigid – and year round at that. So if you can’t get in to swim, you try to find a boat. We soon found that pickings were slim. These were our options: 1. The Sukhbataar – a booze-cruise type ship that takes you round the lake blasting horrible party music. In order for The Sukhbataar to leave port there must be 60 people on board and you only have 15 minutes to get from your camp to the port after its horn is tooted. Plus it’s expensive. 2. Private ventures – little, rusty motor-boats owned by individuals or other ger camps. A base price for these seemed to be in the vicinity of $150 an hour per person.

This did not discourage us, however. With a little more investigation and bargaining, we found a private venture that dropped their price to $10 an hour per person – significantly more doable than $150. So we hired them for a two hour trip around the lake.

As it happened, our boat ride fell on a veritably windy day that had a chill and stirred up white caps from the east. And what direction did we go for the first hour? East, of course - against the wind and waves. And who was the idiot in front? Me, of course - pretending not to be the idiot. Luckily it wasn’t altogether miserable, just a little soggy and bumpy – the driver was worse off than any of us. I figured I could withstand the spray and splashes for the first hour, but was herded to the back after 30 or 40 minutes by Ian who took my place up front.

Not long afterward, our boat driver (the antithesis of Jimmy) slowed and ‘docked’ our vessel at a little peninsula. By ‘docked’ I mean ‘rammed into the steep, rocky side of the peninsula.’ Apparently, this was a good sightseeing place and we were urged to de-boat and have a walk around. If you’ve ever de-boated onto the steep side of a hill, you can imagine how hilarious we looked flinging our legs over the boat railing and scrambling up for dear life. Or maybe that was just me. Yeah, it was just me.

After taking some pictures, stretching our legs, and covertly going to the bathroom, we were all back on the boat to finish our little tour. It was on this return trip that Ian took bearings for a mountain range a little more than 8km (5 miles) from our camp. There was rumor of a second hike involving this mountain range, which I thought was incredibly ambitious and a little frightening. But it was only a rumor, right?

The way back was significantly less soggy and bumpy and by the time we eased up to the dock (a real one, not a cliffside), we felt two hours had been satisfactory. Really, if we wanted to boat the entirety of the lake, it would have taken all day…and we didn’t have enough money or dry clothes for that kind of thing.

Thus the boat ride ended and we merrily skipped our soggy bottoms back to camp. At dinner that evening, the rumor of the second hike turned into a plan for the next day’s excursion. It was to be a very big day. I like to refer to it as the epic hike.

And epic it was.

chapter seven - Wee Hike

I always like to think of myself as a hiker. Possessing no athletic skill but the ability to walk (which actually isn’t even vaguely athletic), this is the only sport in which I can really enjoy exerting myself. I like plodding under leafy treetops or clambering up the sides of hills or meandering through still meadows. My dream life involves mountains, a backpack and a tent. And there is a reason why it’s a dream life: my hiking experiences have been limited to a mid-western life; catalyzed by cornfields. Hiking that I’m used to is a short jaunt along well-marked, relatively level, often tarred paths through little state parks. So, in reality, my dream life would probably kill me because I’d get lost within 5 minutes or fall off the mountain…or both.

The hiking I did around Huvsgul Lake was something like a refiner’s fire. It didn’t kill me or obliterate any joy I have for hiking – it revealed to me my own inefficiency and inadequacy as one who labels herself ‘hiker’ and crazily enough, strengthened the joy I find in hiking. I will outline for you the lessons I learned during the first hike we did:

To the north of our ger camp was a formidable hill (maybe 1,000 feet/300 meters or so). It was mostly covered in trees except for a few bald patches near the top. Our goal was to hike the hill and eat lunch on top of it. My first lesson was in methodology: when facing a steep mountain or hillside, I walk straight up. Whereas, more experienced and intelligent hikers walk in zig-zag fashion so they don’t kill themselves getting to the top. Therefore, Zig-zag = genius. I logged this away for future reference.

My second lesson was in resourcefulness: when we reached the topmost bald spot of this hill it was lunch time. Lunch that day consisted of potato chips and ramen noodles. Ian set up the stove to boil water for our noodles while we munched away on the chips enjoying the warmth of the sun. However, we quickly discovered a slight snafu: no one remembered forks. It’s not impossible to eat ramen noodles with out a fork, but anything swimming in boiling hot water really shouldn’t be slurped down without one. Ian to the rescue: taking knife in hand he whittled double pronged fork-like utensils from some twigs on the ground. His wife, Liz, would later follow suit and make a spoon and butter knife.

I should explain that Ian and Liz are disgustingly outdoorsy (they probably would not appreciate that adjective but I’m using it anyway). In college, Ian majored in ‘Nature and How to Be Awesome In It,’ and Liz has gone on many a hiking/camping/canoeing trip. These two are the sort that could easily survive in the wild with only a compass and a fork made out of a twig.

My third and most important lesson was in endurance: after lunch I foolishly thought our hike was completed. I forgot I was in the company of jinkhen hikers**; hikers who feel the most at home when there is no trail in sight and only a vast expanse of possibility before them. After we had packed up the remains from lunch, we traveled down the east side of the hill through endless pine forest. There was such a thick layer of pine needles and moss on the ground it was as if we were stepping on a sponge.

After a couple hours we stumbled across a clearing that ended at a cliff overlooking the lake. We stopped here for a few minutes to rest and then followed a path down to the rocky beach. We followed the beach until it ran into a jutting piece of red cliffside. I wasn’t particularly pleased to have to scramble up another steep hillside at this point, but it was the only way to get around the cliffside.

After finding a decent footing on the side of the hill, we came to a narrow goat path and decided to follow it back to our ger camp. This path was made by animals with some kind of death wish. If one stepped incorrectly, it was a messy tumble downward to an even messier splat on the rocks below. I was walking with Ed and Charli for this bit and to keep our minds off the possibility of dying, we talked about the British and American difference of terms for certain bodily functions and articles of clothing.

We followed the treacherous goat path for at least two hours until it opened up onto flat land. Not too long after, we were back in camp and very ready for dinner. This wee hike was somewhere in the vicinity of 5-6 hours, one of the longest hikes I’d done thus far. If that doesn’t sound wee to you, just wait until Chapter Nine.



**language note: jinkhen means real or genuine in Mongolian

chapter six - Oh! The Soup!

This chapter is entirely dedicated to our first meal on the peninsula. I realize this is strange - but only to you. I remember this meal vividly as the thing which made a long 2 day journey, 20 hour drive and a crappy shower worth the trouble. Kind of like coming home after a hard day of work to be rewarded with ice cream you didn’t know was in the freezer.

Our ger camp had a restaurant that served breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday. The first day we had lunch and dinner, every day after that we just had dinner. The meals were pretty pricey ($11 for lunch, $7 for dinner) but hey, it’s the holidays.

The first course was soup. And honestly, this is the only course I remember. I think it was possibly the best soup ever made. Rich, red, thick and spiced just perfectly, we slurped obnoxiously and repeated – “This soup is so good!” – as if it was our own personal eureka. Nothing after that soup was quite as amazing.

The only other meal I remember from our trip was a shepherds pie – and I don’t remember it because it was particularly good. I only remember it because at lunch time there was a live sheep tied up behind the kitchen, it was gone before dinner and our shepherds pie was with mutton. So…he was probably in the shepherds pie. And we ate him.

chapter five - Hatgal, It's a Dump

This is Hatgal: a road, some goods stores, a ‘bus station,’ a few scattered restaurants, some houses, a lot of dirt. Oddly enough, this also describes 80% of the towns in Iowa – minus a bus station. Hatgal, to our bleary, crusted eyes and travel weary disposition presented itself as being quite a dump. Though to be fair, it really was just another small countryside town weathered, wrinkled and smudged by circumstances.

Fortunately we weren’t staying there during our vacation. After unpacking ourselves from Jimmy’s bus, paying him and muttering goodbyes, we just stood around long enough to blow the black snot out of our noses (we must have inhaled at least half of the dirt road we traveled), buy some supplies, and use the toilet. Some 30 or so minutes later a ‘fogron’** from our ger camp rumbled up. It was only 6 more km (3 miles) across another impossible stretch of road to our final destination. After maybe 3 km of knocking our heads against the windows and perfecting a rigor-mortis like grip on the indoor handles, the pine trees parted and Huvsgul Lake shimmered into view. It was as if none of us had ever seen a lake before. I’m not sure about anyone else in the fogron, but my face was plastered to the window.

If I had a list of top 5 things I never get tired of looking at, one of the things would be Huvsgul Lake. The water is so clear you can see straight down 50 meters (31 miles). When the sky is gray, the water looks like a stormy sea. When the sky is clear and blue, the water is the most brilliant shade of tropical turquoise you could imagine. Everything around it is gorgeous, too: dense forest, chiseled mountains, red crumbly cliffs, grey stony beaches. I immediately wanted to stay forever.

Our ger camp was located on a peninsula at the southern section of the lake. It was virtually absent of people besides a gaggle of staff – mostly college kids on internship. When our fogron lurched through the front gates, they had lined themselves up parallel to each other waving us welcome like a spirit tunnel at a high school sports assembly. How sweet. But all that was on my mind then was: shower, bed, food.

Very nearly after we had settled into our respective color coded gers: Ed and Charli in the ‘red ger,’ and poor Ian and Elizabeth with me in the ‘silver ger’ – because each ger only had 3 beds – I was merrily skipping to the shower. The bathroom/shower was in a small cabin a short distance from our gers. The sink, toilet and shower water was all pumped from the lake and heated in an adjacent room. We later learned that if you wanted hot water at say, 6 pm, you had to tell the staff at least 2 hours ahead; otherwise it just remained its icy cold self all day. My shower was taken by candle light as the bulb appeared to be non-functional. In fact I think the light bulb only worked once during our stay.

That first shower was frustrating. The water gurgled from the shower head and was either freezing or boiling – but never anywhere near a comfortable in between. I think it was just dashed expectations of a ‘real shower’ after a long, tough journey that made me close to tears as I hopped around like an idiot under the ice water and cussed out the faucet when I was scalded.

I had an otherwise non-adventurous, yet gloious rest in a very clean, white bed. But the food came next, and that gets its own chapter.




**culture note: a fogron is a kind of sturdy, chunky, funny looking bus made in Russia. I wish all buses were called fogrons.