The wind only howls when you’re inside. Something about the pipes and cavities in a building seems to cause the eerie wail that changes pitch like a theremin in a fifties sci-fi classic. Outside, at nearly 4,000 meters, above a glacier and far from the nearest building, the wind just roars. It’s less like a vintage cinema score and more like standing behind a jet airliner at the end of a runway; a relentless loud roar that varies only in how hard it buffets you as you balance – or try to – on a path made of loose boulders on a twenty degree slope. That’s all I was aware of, that and the fiercely bright blue sky, as I made my way up the shoulder of Malchin Peak, a 4,050 meter high pile of grey boulders above the Potani Glacier in the far west of Mongolia. The altitude didn’t bother me; the boulders didn’t bother me. But that roar was so loud it seemed to consume the very oxygen around. The summit seemed so close, the visual definition crystal clear in the frighteningly bright and blinding sun. But I knew I wasn’t going to reach it. That roaring wind literally blew it from my grasp.
