"Tigranes The Great" is my beloved climb on Titanic Rock in Gnishik canyon, Vayots Dzor province of Armenia. I have bolted it in 2018 and climbed it in 2019.

What a time was it, what a sun, cold air, a team, and what a commitment.. May we have some more of these days again, and again, and again..!

This project was for making а 5 min climbing film, to show tourist climbers what the rock climbing in Armenia looks like, not a screenshot-article that would take it 5 years to come. But we went a bit overcreative and it turned out to be something very personal to me, that I would never let anyone edit it, nor I had a feeling so far of being ready for editing it myself.

Years pass, since young me fell in love with mountains, and in retrospect I'm realizing that the invisible ties of my climbing ropes have fused my own story with the mountains and canyons of Armenia. It occurred so seamlessly and organically that even I do not recognize it unless when questioning myself in those dark nights of the soul, or when being far away from Armenia. And Gnishik (Noravank) canyon is one of those significant ones, like one of your vital organs.

In April of 2023, after living one year in the United States, satisfied from the skiing season in Aspen and then guiding skiers in Armenia, I went to Noravank canyon for opening the climbing season with Karen Marutyan, my devoted armor-bearer on rock and snow.

While climbing in the US, around Boulder Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park, I kept desiring for that moment: for the scent of the plants of Noravank rocks, for talking to the birds there, to hear the rockfalls again when goats run, for listening to the tiny little stream, left from Gnishik river, that tiny artery, giving life to vegetation and all living creatures in the canyon.

However, as we entered into the canyon, my senses picked up a trouble immediately, the tiny little stream was silent. It shook my world, my throat went dry, my chest crumpled, and for a moment I lost my sight.. Is your greed bottomless, Armenian man, that you had to take the last drops of Gnishik's water..?

Two 16'' pipes were already taking the waters of Gnishik river to supply the village Areni, the wine industry and the restaurant complexes by the canyon. Yet the huge canyon was generously silent, living its acetic life with that tiny stream barely supporting its life. And now you wanted to take it all..?

Sometimes I hate our mountains when I can't protect them. I don't have a power to protect them from mining, from hunting, hydropower-plants, unnecessary "development" of tourism infrastructure, and the Jeeping tours that have been growing in Armenia recently like an epidemy. I'm not talking about the Turks who have occupied the vast part of Armenian Plateau, including Artsakh(Nagorno Karabakh), because how can you protect your mountains from others if you can't protect them from yourself? I hate my inability to stop it.

The high profile mud tires of my brothers are taking their Ego up to the mountain tops, with their clients on board. They put a little table, wine, glasses and pairing, Mt. Arararat is in the background, the drone is panning over, the girl is posing for a shot, and the fiancé is happy to pay generously for the show.

A lot of my brothers and sisters would disagree with me, that I had never thought about taking an Armenian flag to any summit (nor anything else, for a laudation), not only because of the attitude to the mountain, but also because: have I really done everything else I could for my country as a citizen, and as an Armenian? How does the flag standing higher than the summit of a mountain help my country?

It would be glorious if we all believe that the self indulgence to summit the mountain is sanctioned only when we go up there empty. It's harder and I'm not a saint. Probably I have succeeded doing so few times, when did not even take photos or videos on the summit. Fighting that weakness would be my ultimate summit ti climb.

When Reinhold Messner nailed it 'Where does alpinism begin when tourism has reached the summit of Mount Everest' he did not mean it to be only about following the guide on a classical alpine route with pre-fixed ropes, which means loosing the challenge and the spirit of mountaineering, but also about the way and what for do we summit.

Whatever. After that visit in April of 2023 to Gnishik canyon, a couple of other climbing trips followed there, and it was just too much. I decided to detach myself from Gnishik and not to think about it for a while. A month ago, when driving south, I turned the wheel to the right, into the canyon, and when stopped the car I heard the song of the little stream again...

I hit the number of Karen right away to tell him that the canyon is alive. Actually it was the drоught of 2023 that drained the stream (at the same time the two 16'' pipes were full of the water though).

After all, even though I accept and deal with the tangible reality, I'm full of faith that one day Armenian climbers and skiers will be drawing their art on the mountains of Armenian Plateau as free artists, without these concerns which I have today, from the Trapizon (Black Sea) to Anatolia (Mediterranean Sea) till Paitakaran (Caspian Sea), on our historical lands as since the times of Tigranes The Great.

View the embedded image gallery online at:
https://www.uptherocks.com/index.php/rock-climbing-in-armenia/267-tigranes-the-great#sigProIdd717410f33

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