Up The Rocks

In the morning I have recognized, that I am becoming Armenian. I usually start in the mountains very soon in the morning, but not in Armenia. After long long breakfast we have started at about 10a.m.! So, it was quite clear, that we will not be able to climb all four peaks of Aragats (North 4090 m, West 3995 m, East 3908 m and South 3879 m) in one day. So, our aim was to climb the highest peak of Armenia - North Aragats. We walked from Kari Lake to the pass between West and South Aragats. On the way we met a big group of Iranian tourists, which were already descending. Communication was quite hard with them, as they knew only Persian.

Our first break was in the pass between West and South Aragats, and we could see a group of strange guys trying to traverse broken rocks of east slopes of West Aragats. Mkhitar screamed on them to stop traversing, but they wanted to continue in that very dangerous terrain with many falling rocks. We step down through the steep debris of big rocks to the valley among all four peaks of Aragats. In the south we can nicely seen snow and glacier summit of Ararat (5136 m) coming out from the haze. From the valley we climbed near the pass between North and East Aragats and continued to subsidiary lower summit 4080 m. Original 5 m high cross on the main summit (4090 m) is broken by weather and lies on the rocks.

The route between subsidiary and main summit is not hard (up to UIAA II), but the rocks are completely broken. It means, that almost every piece of rock you stand on or hold by fingers is free and can fell down (and you too). Mkhitar was on the main summit already many times, and for me (as I prefer winter conditions) it had no sense to go through these free rocks. So, we spent about 20 minutes on the subsidiary summit and started descending. It was very fast, as the ground glided down with us. Mkhitar is much more experienced in such conditions, so he was much faster than me.

We descended to the valley and climbed again to pass between South and West Aragats. From pass there was steep part to summit of South Aragats (3879 m), which is covered with many stone compositions. We continued on the ridge from South Aragats to the south near Kari Lake. We were there at about 5p.m. and packed tents. By Spitak Rescue Team car Lada Niva we rided back to Yerevan in a group of six people with all bacpacks! Excellent experience.

Finally, after visiting the historic fortress at the basement of Aragats we got to Yerevan at about 9 p.m. and there were enough time for me to pack my things and went to airport… My favourite activity is ski-mountaineering and I found these Aragats’ summits very interesting for winter or spring skiing, so I hope I will get there in near future.