15-Jul-2005 -- Day seven of a thirteen day trip. We were seeking a pass over the western shoulder of Ikh Bogd mountain and took two very rocky dirt tracks as false starts, bouncing over boulders and dipping in and out of dry drainages running from the south flank of the mountain. Eventually we drove back down to the main valley before finding the right track up into a high valley that lead past the confluence to a coll at 2066 m. Tracks went to within 500 m of the confluence and the exact point could be driven right up to.

We thought this a really cool confluence to get. Half way from the pole to the equator and a nice round 100 degrees east of Greenwich (okay, that doesn’t tie into half, third or quarter of the way around but 45N 100E looks good to me!)

The valley contained several groups of gers and the locals were out herding sheep and goats in pleasant 25 degree Celsius weather. They probably wondered why we were driving to an apparently random spot in the middle of their landscape.

Driving down the northern valley from the pass after the confluence was spectacular. Uplifted conglomerate beds collapsing into a narrow fault valley with walls hundreds of metres high. In placed the valley narrowed to a canyon where anything much larger than a jeep would have had problems passing through. A small stream ran down part of the valley which provided some cool relief before coming out onto the flats north of the mountain, 700 m lower than the coll and a whole lot hotter at 40 degrees Celsius.

Previously on this trip we also visited 45N 105E and 44N 102E. This was the final confluence we visited before returning to Ulaanbaatar.