Day 9 – camp 4 to camp 5

GMT +7 hours meant at this location that clocks go back 1 hour. It also meant that the day was one hour longer.

The night went fast as we were buggered and woke at the consistent time of 4.30am.

The start time was at 9.35 and due to the time we had available, reread the rally work books and planned the day.
As usual the track lay before us in the vast hinterland of Mongolia. What a land a beauty of lakes and mountains, wild animal, animals like horses and geep, yaks and so forth. The barren desert just kept rolling out in front of us showings it’s special nature.

The first leg was 175kms of tarmac straight roads, a little boring but time to view some sights.

Then onto gravel travel of road dirt, dust and river rock tracks, varying from rough sandy tracks to wet slippery mud tracks. We ascended to 2500 meters altitude into mountainous country. Beautiful but hash. The roads were considered unsafe so after some really rough rocky roads at a Time Control we were advised that the event was cancelled for the onward legs due to bad weather and the resulting wet conditions.

So, we worked our way slowly at first climbing over rocks and around muddy pools of black water. Very slippery and hard to read.
Then when climbing higher some cars got stick and spun on the road and others just ended up having to be towed to the top of the next ridge.

That was all very well but descending on the other side whilst a storm was raging ahead of us the dirt tracks were like a black ice sludgy surface. Ahead we came across two cars that had spun out and we too got into a half spin that took us by surprise. We pulled out with a little help from another competitor and offered our assistance to them.
But had to move on. That’s what the “sweeps” are there for and the road that we were on produced more spinners that could be dangerous to bystanders.

The mountains and the hail and snow were fantastic. Photos will show.

So, it was downhill over the never-ending river stone roads, then barren sandy desert where roads just can’t be determined. The GPS is the tool that gets us there in the end. And so it was that we arrived at our camp destination without difficulty.

Denise and her mechanic, driver, Steve managed to bring us through this most eventful day of rallying. The pity is that Denise was built for this sort of stuff and to have the event cancelled due to other cars not being able to handle these conditions is a travesty for us. It’s the only are that we can earn points, and it’s cancelled.

At rest in the camp Steve inspects and attends to the various injuries sustained during the ride.

It was a great ride today for the car and the driver and passenger. Really great.