Ice Canyons in the Desert

         Back from the dunes we ate the food we had bought in Dalanzagdag rather than take "lunch" again from our host and went to bed early. The beds were lumpy and rather hard, but marginally more comfortable than the board I had slept on chez Ohchkee the previous night. The outhouse, however, was 77 paces away (I counted) and it rained all night. So every time I had to go I put on my shoes and coat and out I went. Eventually I skipped the full journey and just added to the precipitation from the clouds onto the sand in the back of the yurt. The outhouse, I must say, was fancier than those in the others yurt compounds where we had stayed. Our host must have had a sense of style, since he covered his planks with colorful contact paper, and the whole thing was a sheet metal shed, rather than a wooden one, kind of like I imagined one of Wilhelm Reich's Orgone Boxes (for which he went to jail in 1959 and died there).

         We slept an extra hour, lulled by the rain, and after breakfasting on our own supplies plus more fried bread and very (goat) milky tea, we were out of there by 8 am. Our host's son and wife had showed up, both of whom towered over him, and I was glad to know he wasn't there alone, as he had indicated, but his English was extremely limited (mainly to "camel" and "lunch").

Left to right: the author, Ohchkee our driver, our host's son, our host, and his wife.

         We had a long distance to go and kept hoping the rain would let up, and the sky did seem to brighten a bit in the distance. We saw two hawks, which flew away before I could get a good photo.
         After about 3 hours we arrived at a small town and pulled into a gas station on the edge of town. No one was there, but a phone number was posted that Ohchkee called. In about five minutes a husky woman pulled up in a 4WD and unlocked the 80 octane pump. There was also a small stupa across from the station.

        On the agenda for the day was Yolyn Am, which was supposed to be of geologic interest plus ice persisted there into the summer. In another hour we arrived at a canyon with an iced-over stream, which I took to be our major destination. It reminded me of canyons of the US Southwest, except for the ice, which was quite exceptional.

         So I thought the day's sightseeing was over--Ochkee's English was not good enough to correct this impression, but this was Dungeneegyn Am ("Big Canyon") I later found out, and only a foretaste of the main event. So I was surprised and delighted when we pulled up to a "protected area" where there was a small natural history museum and gift shop. We had to wait for the attendant to raise the barrier, then we pulled in and visited the museum. It was rather rudimentary, as could be expected, mostly featuring stuffed mammals and birds of the Gobi, many of them in rather fanciful poses, including some big spotted cats. There was also a room of dinosaur fossils, no complete skeletons, but some interesting eggs and bone fragments, and one complete fossil torso in the original position it was found.

         We paid the 2000 MNT museum entrance fee and then a 3000 MNT "Protected Area Service Fee," which I didn't understand at first. Then we drove to the end of the parking area, had some lunch, which Ochkee embellished with some sweet hot coffee boiled on a tiny burner fueled with an aeresol can of methane, and then he invited us on a three-kilometer hike. The weather was nasty, very foggy, and Barbara was in no mood for such an extensive hike, but I figured it was part of the tour, and I'd best see what it was.
         THIS turned out to be Yolyn Am, the main attraction of the day, and it was spectacular. Ochkee couldn't tell us any of this (we had opted, after all, only for a driver who spoke no English rather than an English-speaking guide as well, thus saving $600+), but my faith proved correct. It was a sublime experience.
         And not necessary a beautiful one. If we follow Edmund Burke's 1757 distinction between the sublime and the beautiful from his famous essay on the subject, the beautiful is that which is well-formed, pleasing to the senses and calming to the nerves; while the sublime is that which has the power to compel and destroy us, often inspiring fear. Moreover, its qualities include vastness, a sense of infinity, and magnificence, creating nervous tension rather than tranquility. The distinction is often cited as the critical one between the classical sensibility and the romantic. Burke's qualities of the sublime were exactly what I found at Yolyn Am in the fog.
         We clambered down an embankment and found ourselves on a wide expanse with a river flowing through it. A little farther down the ice began, then it got thicker, up to about 6 or even 8 inches thick, with many surface patterns resulting from differential freezing and the blowing of sand. Water flowed around it. A little farther down the walls of the canyon closed in: jagged black rocks up to about 80 feet high in peaks and pinnacles, with slopes of varying steepness. We followed the river, which was soon completely covered with ice, slightly above the water flow, which was quite audible underneath. The fog was so thick that the canyon walls receded into a vague gray blur at 60 feet away then disappeared. The highest summits were never more than a looming, ominous shape. The wonderful thing about fog this thick is that you can vary the definition of your foreground by changing your distance from it. So I could make the ice, its lines and textures quite sharp and assertive, the rock surfaces and aromatic brush nearby quite textured, while the receding canyon walls that I framed all this with became increasingly indistinct and mysterious.  
         The ice textures, thickness, sand patterns, edge lines and even color varied considerably. There were patches of light blue; concavities of shattered crystal (which turned out to be footprints); a shelf about a foot off the water surface that dripped down. You could walk on the ice, but yes it was slippery. You had to be VERY careful, extremely sure of your footing.

         Ohchkee kept disappearing ahead of me in the fog, since I took more time for my photography. At one point a group of about 12 young people came hiking through. I got eight of them to pose holding hands across the ice. More people arrived. It was officially before the start of the season, so I'm grateful there weren't great crowds.

The shelf.

         Finally, I arrived at an area where the canyon opened onto a lake, some of which was open water. Ohchkee was ahead of me, but I didn't know where the solid spots were, so he suggested we turn around.

        We had walked about two kilometers in a little over an hour. On our way back I spotted those small burrowing animals that had been so elusive during our drive. Their holes were everywhere. This time, however, they let me approach, and I got some very clear images with my 300 mm telephoto. I believe they were picas.

         As we approached the parking area I paid a visit to the outhouse, which was the most refined one I had seen in the Gobi--this was a protected area after all. It was a large pit toilet with a women and men's side, and a wooden toilet SEAT covered with contact paper. It was almost too much luxury.

         We were back in Dalanzagdag within the hour and found a comfortable hotel with bathtub, the Khan Uul.