Mongolia is certainly going out with a bang. This is another stage with some serious climbing thrown in, and despite the big descent just before halfway, you will definitely come away from this stage knowing that you’ve worked.
The rollout is uphill and lumpy on a long sweeping left hander. By the time the bend finally gives way to a right hander swinging back the other way, you’re already halfway up the climb and at three miles. But the (first) summit isn’t until five miles, with another straight after following a wee dip. Then you’re onto the long descent, a four hundred foot drop in five miles, by which time you’ve rounded another right hander and are heading directly south.
The railway’s away off to the east by this point, having given up trying to cope with the gradient and instead taking a longer route south. The main reason for that is the climb that starts at eleven miles: four hundred feet back up to both fourteen miles and sixteen miles with a small down and up in between.
As the road continues to snake left and right through the hills, the next descent drops you down two hundred feet to the twenty mile mark where, sadly, you begin the final climb of the day up to the finish. It’s lumpy flat and uphill to begin with but soon gets its act together as the road approaches twenty two miles.
This is not a nice stage, although the twists and turns do manage to take the heat out of some of the climbs.
Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres
Ascent: 942 feet / 287 metres
RGT Magic Road: pLwO4ijvP9QW
Max elevation: 3658 ft
Min elevation: 3261 ft
Total climbing: 941 ft
Total descent: -767 ft
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