Home arrow Rock Climbing arrow ‘Spitak’ rescue team’s climbing Noravanq canyon 09/05/07
‘Spitak’ rescue team’s climbing Noravanq canyon 09/05/07
Written by Mkhitar Mkitaryan   
Saturday, 26 April 2008

May 9, 2007 - the morning was cloudy, and Vahe (big) said by telephone “… the swallows are flying too low, it’ll be raining, and we have to postpone our picnic… ”.

Anyway we decided to go: “what the swallows do is none of our business” told Vardan (bonjour-1). We intended to combine our picnic with climbing the Noravanq canyon sport routes (they’re 13, set up by Alexey Trubachev www.alexclimb.com by order of tourist agency ‘Wishap Adventure’)
We were on the way when the clouds disappeared and it got sunny. Vahe’s Audi ran ahead and while we in Ando’s Niva were driving on the turns of the road, Audi’s team were enjoying Noravanq monastery.
We were to meet at the sector ‘Triangle’ on the way to the monastery and when we got there the Audi team weren’t back yet, so Vardan, Yulia and me decided to walk ahead to the monastery and come back by our friend’s car.

We were walking about two kilometers under the hot sun when a truck appeared in front of us coming from monastery. We were happy to stop it and asking the driver to take us in the back part (kuzov) back till the sector ‘Triangle’. We asked him to stop and drop us near the Niva parked on the road. Getting close to our friends we found out that the driver wasn’t going to stop, he seemed to have forgotten about us and as we were in the back part of the truck (kuzov) and engine noise was too loud to shout to the driver to stop, Vardan found a stone in the back part of the truck and threw it at the drivers window. Fortunately, the driver got that he should stop and drop us near the parked car.

Soon the other part of the team were back and after lunch we started to warm up on ‘Triangle’ routes: Kret-5a 20m, Kaitsak-6c 20m and Oc-5b 20m. After hanging a rope the girls were enjoying the routes top roping. Suddenly our biker friends Vache and Vahe (bonjour-2) appeared by their Honda CRM as they knew that we were there and it started to be more fun.
After having some fun on ‘Triangle’ it was time to climb Danak-60m the route near Triangle. Alexey Trubachev’s route rating is R1-V, R2-V, R3-IV, which I can’t understand yet.
Our subjective rate is R1-5a/5.7, R2-5b+/5.8, R3-5a/5.7.
We enjoyed ‘Danak’ very much and tourist’s white bus as well, they were on the way back from monastery, spotting us they stopped the bus and were watching us
. And on the way back as a tradition we went to ‘Areni’ wine factory to help ourselves with excellent wine. The air inside was soaked with wine aroma and even the objective of the photo camera got drunk immediately.

 
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