Up The Rocks

Before reading an article in Rock & Ice and watching Sam Bie’s excellent film on Armenian climbing, we virtually knew nothing about this little land locked country, except for the genocide and their world famous wrestlers.

Mio amico Ale has checked out by internet that the busses Verona-Arco work till 10pm. So when I arrived to Verona from Val Pellice at about 9:30pm, it appeared that the info found in internet was updated many-many years ago. So I managed to get Arco at about 2:00am by very fancy way (thanks to guys from street cafe in Rovereto ;)

After Mt Weissmies I got back to Florence to my friend Ale, Dani, Lau and nice guy Giacomo. The next days it was supposed to join Ale’s friend Filippo Romolli and climb the rock formation called Candalla close to the town Forte dei Marmi located on the seashore. Alessandro couldn’t join us again - being a professor of law makes your summer holidays become in a nightmare with endless students..

With the end of the Festival our motivation didn´t end! We saw so many lines, still unclimbed that we decided to spend one more week in Armenia for more first ascents! After two days checking out the rock in the north and destroying more and more Andranik’s car ;), we decided to go back to Arpa gorge to climb some more routes in these beautiful columns!

Armenian First Ascent Open Festival 2011 was successfully and productively completed.
48 traditional, sport and bouldering routes were established as a result of the festival!
The number of the routes in Armenia was almost doubled from the pre-event time. The event was took place in five different rocky areas of Armenia: Hell's Canyon, Chiva Blocks, Noravanq Canyon, Arpa Gorge and Garni Gorge. It provided a nice opportunity to get useful feedback from climbers of different countries with different climbing styles, which enabled the convergence of their opinions and preferences about the aspects of developing climbing on the rock formations of these sites.

In the morning of May 29, the crew left for Garni Gorge, the last destination of the Festival where basalt columns rock formations were waiting for climbers. As it was mentioned before, the basalt columns in Garni and Arpa Gorges are considered Natural Monuments and Up The Rocks club got the permit to Clean Climb on these formations during the Festival from Ministry of Nature Protection.

In the afternoon of May 26, the event crew set up the camp on the plateau above Arpa Gorge, one of two basalt columns formation of Armenia. Like the basalt columns at Garni Gorge, basalt column formations in Arpa Gorge are also considered Natural Monuments. To climb on these formations during the Festival only by Clean Climbing discipline,
Up The Rocks club received permission of Ministry of Nature Protection.

We got to Noravanq Canyon in the afternoon of May 23. It was raining, so it was decided to stay in the small hotel close to the restaurant at the crossroad of Noravanq Canyon. After a small rest and shower participants walked through the canyon to check out the rocks and choose the lines for the next day’s climb.

This amazing bouldering site, on the slopes of the mountains above the Chiva village, was discovered by Jared Nielson. It’s located some 15km closer than Noravanq Canyon when you drive from Yerevan. There are countless boulders with a huge potential of hundreds of bouldering problems from V0 to V8 and higher. There are two large flat areas among the boulders which may serve as campsite.

In the evening of May 21 the event opening party was held in “Friends” bar in Yerevan. The party started introducing the chronological facts of rock climbing in Armenia since 1940s - that’s when an honorable member of Up The Rocks, Aghvan Chatinyan, has successfully started it’s climbing carrier at the alpinism school of Soviet Union.
It was followed by the slideshow reporting the period our elder generations’ climbing activity and nowadays, presenting the recent climbs. Later, Will Nazarian and Katy Anderson shared a nice slideshows of their climbing experience in US and Europe. The party ended with bear and Latino dance cheer ups.