The last stage in Mongolia, with the Chinese border waiting at the finish, and despite the lumpiness of the route, it’s a fast one. The route is south easterly and relatively straight until the last five miles where a sharp right hander lets up a long looping left hander that set up the crossing into China. With the return of the flatter lands, the railway line is once again your virtual companion and it runs alongside the road on its left hand side for the entire length of the stage.
The rollout is lumpy flat for a couple of miles before the road descends a hundred feet to four miles. Then the sharpest climb of the stage kicks in but it’s relatively short at only two miles, and although it regains all of the elevation lost in the descent, and rises to the highest elevation of the stage, it only gains just over a hundred feet.
There’s then a longer descent down to ten miles before a lumpy up/down/up/down delivers you to fifteen miles and the lowest elevation of the stage. By the time you’re halfway along the longest straight of the stage and as the road begins a gentle but steady climb to nineteen miles, it’s more a case of finding a gear that allows you to maintain a decent speed than worrying about the gradient.
From twenty miles, the road is lumpy flat all the way to the finish. There’s a looping left/right combination at twenty miles that swings the road into a long left hander that has the Chinese border crossing at twenty three miles, just a mile from the end of the stage.
Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres
Ascent: 328 feet / 100 metres
RGT Magic Road: WSIrT2vqrX9i
Max elevation: 3299 ft
Min elevation: 3110 ft
Total climbing: 316 ft
Total descent: -445 ft
You must log in to post a comment.