A couple of mountaineers from Steinbach battled a two-day blizzard and the continuous threat of avalanches in an epic climb in Mongolia earlier this month.

David Banman and Adam MacDonald have embarked on numerous mountain climbing adventures over the years and this time decided to hit a very remote spot in eastern Asia, near Siberia. The mountain range is called the Altai Mountains and technically speaking, Banman says it is not that tough a climb. He says the isolation is attractive to climbers, even though the highest peak stretches only about 14,500 feet into the air. But, Banman says on this climb, the weather is a huge factor.

There were six people in the group. The two Steinbach climbers, another friend who has joined them on other climbs, and three others from different parts of the globe. They had a crew of seven people, which included guides, porters and a cook. Banman explains Bactrian camels and horses were used to transport their equipment into base camp.

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Banman says it took them about two days to reach base camp. It was a walk of about 25 kilometres after spending eight hours bouncing around in a Russian van over gravel and rocks. After making it to base camp, the group did a couple of climbs to acclimatize. On one of the climbs, the route down was extremely slippery and Banman says they decided to improvise by sitting down in the snow, pushing off and sliding down the mountain and into Russia. Banman says they travelled about 2,500 feet in about ten minutes, a distance that would otherwise have taken them more than two hours to hike.

"It was a lot of fun, it was like a big toboggan race," he recalls. "We just had to quickly cross back from Russia back into Mongolia before anybody found out."

An avid golfer, Banman started a tradition a handful of years ago of bringing a golf club and balls along on his climbs. This climb was no exception. Banman says they will usually play a round of golf in the base camp with the other climbers and guides, many of whom have never seen a golf club before. While climbing along the Mongolia/ Russia border, Banman says he teed off a ball from a cliff in Mongolia, which landed in Russia.

"It was kind of unique," recalls Banman. "The guide was laughing, thought it was kind of amusing."

In their attempt to climb Friendship Peak, Banman says they were rocked by a blizzard that kept them trapped in their tent for 42 hours. He says thankfully their phone had enough juice to watch a couple of movies. Other than that, there was little they could do but listen to the howling wind as two feet of fresh snow fell. With a wind chill in the -20's, Banman says it was colder than they had banked on, though thankfully their tents and sleeping bags kept them warm enough.

By then, any dreams of reaching the summit were dashed. Banman says following the storm they had a two-hour window of favourable weather to pack their bags and make their way down before the conditions deteriorated. Three and a half hours later they were back at base camp and looked up to see an avalanche off the face of Friendship Peak, right where they were supposed to climb.

"Prudence was definitely the word of the day that day," he says.

Banman says they were only about 500 vertical feet from the summit when they opted to turn around for safety reasons. He says it would have taken them about 60 minutes to climb that in good conditions. Yet, Banman is not disappointed in the outcome.

"In most instances, it would be disappointing but in this case, we were just pleasantly surprised with everything that was surrounding us," he says. "I think we were much less apt this time to be worried about the summit."

Banman adds they only found out after, that their guide, known as a world-class climber, has not had a successful summit with any of her groups in that area the last four Septembers.

As mentioned, avalanches were a constant threat. Banman says sometimes you could hear them, but were unsure of how close they were. He says thankfully the avalanches stayed on the other side of the mountain. Yet, they sounded like a train barrelling at 60 miles per hour, making it impossible to hear yourself speak. He says it made for a little more interesting sleep at night.

Banman says one of the most unique parts of his trip happened after the climb. Banman says they took in an eagle hunting festival, where the skills of eagles and trainers were on full display. Games included dead goat tug of war on horseback, men and women racing horses while the women used a horsewhip to try and whip the men and eagle calling. Traditional foods for sale included sheep dumplings and goat on a stick.

Speaking of food, Banman says because Mongolia has virtually no trees and can not produce crops, they ate a lot of meat on their trip. This included sheep, goat and horse meat. He notes one day their chef decided to make them a Russian specialty called perisky.

"I laughed so hard saying 'that's what my grandmother has made since I was a little kid' and sure enough they were little perisky this time with sheep rather than ground beef but it was kind of some comfort food for me," says Banman.

With another climb now under his belt, Banman admits he is not sure what is next. Banman says as he gets older it gets harder to sit in a tent for 40 hours with aching bones.

"I'm not sure what we are going to do next but I'm sure there will be some sort of adventure component to it," he says.