are six Americans and one Mongolian, canoeing in a dark, narrow, basaltic gorge, with boulders blocking our route downstream and rare lammergeier vultures with eight-foot spans soaring above. Our Russian topographic maps are useless for detailed navigation,
and we have no real knowledge of what obstacles lie ahead. According to local nomadic herders, the Chuluut River, in the Arkhangai province of ntral Mongolia, is low-far below normal for this time of year. For four days now, the river
has varied between a maze of interconnecting channels only inches deep and virtually contin uous Class II-III rapids that skirt rugged mountain slopes with SOD-foot cliff walls. Progress, as negotiating any unknown river, is slow. Conditions demand that we paddle, push and
l our canoes, especially when confronting the Chuluut minefields-canyon stretches where r-sized boulders choke the river. A week earlier, we had departed los Angeles on an l8-hour flight to Ulaanbaatar,
the capital of Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar is a bustling city of 680,000 inhabitants, where tradition- 41
