These mountains merge with the Sayan Mountains and have summits over 14,000 feet. These mountains themselves are extremely high, rising directly from the steppes, and whose peaks are continually covered in deep snow. Passes between Gora Belucha at 14,783 feet and Najrambal Uul at 14,291 feet, both in an area of year-round snow. In these mountains and passes, the temperature can reach 105º during the day and drop to -40º at night, with 10-20 inches of rain or equivalent snowfall.
The mountain ranges the Jaredites would have had to cross are continuous as this picture shows. One very tall range after another for miles and milesIn all mountain ranges there are depressions, which in Switzerland are called necks, and in America are called a notch, and elsewhere in the world are called passes. In these are found the pathways, trails and roads over the ranges. In the case of the Altai Mountains, passes across the range are few and difficult, the chief being the Ulan–daban to the north, which is 9,445 feet and the Chapchan-daban to the south, at 10,554 feet, where the permanent snow line exists, which is the altitude boundary of a snow-capped mountain.
Crossing mountains today are less of a problem than in antiquity, with special cold-weather gear, hiking shoes and clothes, pitons, clamps, light-weight ropes, backpacks, water bottles, hand warmers, concentrated food, maps, and trails clearly marked. Because of these and other advantages, mountain climbing has become a major sport, and hiking mountain trails and passes a weekend adventures. But in 2100 B.C., and in the area under discussion, climbing those mountain passes would have been a serious and deadly journey.
Consider the plight of the famous Hannibal Barca, who started out to cross the French Alps and drop down into Italy to commence the second Punic War in 218 B.C. When he left his Spanish base he had a 100,000-man army of mercenaries and officers, 8,000 horsemen and their mounts, and around 40 elephants. His fatal trek across the Alps has been called one of the greatest military journeys in ancient history. However, when he reached the Italian side of the Alps, he had only 25,000 troops and 3 elephants, the bulk of the losses occurring crossing the Alps through a mountain pass of about 10,500 feet, considered to be not only the highest pass in the Alps—yet, lower than the passes the Jaredites would have traversed.
Hannibal had no baggage train, each soldier carried his own supplies, and there were engineers who forged ahead of the army to build roads they could use through the pass, yet his hourney was fraught with dangers, extreme difficulties, and constant problems with his veteran and combat-hardened army, who were continually frightened from the weather, storms, snowfall, and alpine sounds. The Jaredites, on the other hand, would have had about one hundred people, including children and babies, numerous animals, birds, fish, bees and seeds of every kind.
The two passes mentioned earlier over the Altai mountains were the best and most used passes between the steppes and China and the only way to traverse this mountain range until well into modern times. To suggest that the Jaredites, who would have been the first to cross this range in 2100 B.C., could have crossed either of these passes that were even higher than Hannibal’s, who had battle hardened troops, cavalry horses, war elephants and road engineers, yet lost about one half of their men, and most of their elephants, seems beyond a sensible person’s imagination. No matter whether the Jaredites would have started from the steppes area (Nibley), or from Mesopotamia and gone north and across the Caspian (Reynolds) into the steppes area, one can only imagine at the impossible crossing of these mountains down into the Gobi and to the sea beyond.
(See Part IV for additional information on how Nibley has the Jaredites reaching the Steppes from Mesopotamia over the Caucasus Barrier)
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