Exercise Dragon Mongolian Odyssey was a mountaineering expedition undertaken by 10 members of 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic) to the Tavan Bogd Mountain Range on the Mongolia, China, Russian boarder, with the intention of qualifying junior soldiers with various mountain foundation qualifications, knowledge and experience.

The location of the expedition was in the western most point of Mongolia, in the Tavan Bogd National Park, which is considered sacred to local Tuvans and Kazakhs. We went with 3 instructors and 7 novices to one of the remotests places we’ve ever taken a group on adventure training.

It took us nearly 5 days travel from London, via Beijing. We then flew to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, then onto Olgii, a small outpost town on the edge of the nowhere. We spent a day here finalising any kit that we needed and sourcing additional food and fuel for the expedition. We then had a 200km drive to the national park ranger station, followed by a 14km trek to base camp, next to the glacier, before we even started our training.

With access to most of the mountains only possible across the Potaniin Glacier and the Alexander Glacier, we had to be sure that each individual was trained and confident with the glacier skills that might be needed if we got ourselves into difficulty. We learnt how to use crampons and ice axes and recover from a fall. We learnt how to rope up and walk safely as a group across the glacier. We did crevasse rescue drills and climbing up and down ice walls to give confidence in our equipment.

We did acclimatisation walks around the local area, traversing one of the ridge lines that ran along the Russian boarder, always overlooking the glacier.

As a group, we summitted Nairamdal (4180m) and Malchin (4050m) some of the highest peaks in the mountain range. We couldn’t attempt Khuiten (4374m) due to bad weather and a lot of snowfall - one morning we had to dig out some of the tents.

On the expedition, we experienced nearly a 50 degree temperature change, ranging from about -20C on the summit (with wind chill) to nearly 30C in the cities.

Each person in the group learnt new skills and found new confidence in themselves and their abilities. As individuals and working as a team, as we were reliant on each other the whole time for safety and support. Being able to take individuals on exercises like this challenges even the most experienced, as it was a completely unknown territory to all of us. However much planning and preparation, we were still unsure on what to expect until we actually arrived, but that is part of adventure training - expect the unexpected and be as fully prepared as possible.
Spr Victoria James