I found several reputable mountain guiding services in eastern Turkey and, as is common elsewhere, just as many “chancers.” I homed in on one in particular, mainly because I liked the website’s confidence—when traveling to remote locations often overlooked by popular tourist guides, there sometimes isn’t much more information to go on. When this outfit’s guides did attempt to reach Ararat’s summit, their website implied, they were often successful. I also noticed that Zafer, a leader with the company, lived not far from Mount Ararat, in the Turkish city of Van.
Zafer’s email response to my inquiry confirmed that it could take two or more months to secure a Turkish permit to trek on Mount Ararat. He could help arrange that. “I will have your permit here when you arrive in Van.” It was spring when we first connected and he had not yet firmed up a climb date for mid-August. “I would try for us to begin the mountain on a Friday morning, if the weather is good. There can be thunder. Rain. Maybe rainbow.”
He set out his intentions. “First climb day leaves Doğubeyazit in morning. Truck will bounce you to between six and seven thousand-foot levels on mountain. There, physical trek begins.” The day would be a long climb, with packhorses carrying our provisions. “Aim for Base Camp around 10,000 feet. Next day climb to Camp II near 14,000 foot level.” The summit would be approached from there. “If people have difficulty with altitude, we use day to acclimatize.” From Camp II, one night—weather, conditioning, and health on our side—we would attempt the summit, leaving camp at 1:30 a.m., headlamps fastened. “Starting in the middle of the night, we climb mile and a half toward sunrise,” Zafer noted, saying we’d take at least five hours to make a gain of three thousand feet in altitude. August showed nighttime temperatures at this altitude to range from –4°F to 23°F (–20°C to –5°C). “The final thirteen hundred feet is over snow and ice and will be difficult. The summit wind can be forty to fifty miles an hour at the top.”
Zafer advised: “Bring an ice axe to Ararat. You won’t likely need it for the climb. But if you fall you may need one to keep from sliding off the mountain.”
Zafer’s colleague at the time, Dr. Amy Beam, an American educator living in Barbados, owned a company that provided logistics for climbers heading to Ararat, and she took over my booking. “Yes, I’ve been to Ararat,” she informed me via email, “while working with another guide.” She confirmed that August was the most favorable month to attempt an ascent, but stressed that at any time of the year, unpredictable weather made a big difference between successful and unsuccessful summits. “You may not reach the peak. Extra days are needed if the weather turns. Go only if you have patience.”
“How many other trekkers will be coming along?” I asked, hoping to hear “None.”
“We like small groups, perhaps six or eight at the most,” she replied. “There will be other groups from other nations on the mountain at the same time. Usually they are also small in size. Some trek only partway. It is a lot of work to summit.” She said that the plan was to depart Doğubeyazit and be on the mountain the morning of Friday, August 23rd.
That worked for me. It allowed time to apply for the permit as well as make air and train arrangements. A few days later, I was looking around online and realized that the August full moon would occur one day after we completed our ascent. The possibility of seeing a full moon over Mount Ararat took hold of me. I phoned Amy.
“Amy, can you imagine summiting Mount Ararat at night under a full moon?”
“That,” she said, “would be awesome.”
“Can we shift our mountain arrival date?” I begged. “Or spend a day trekking around?”
It sounded like she smiled over the phone. “Yes, we will delay your on-mountain start-off,” she said. “This will be a special journey. There is only one other person going right now anyway—a Welshman from China, or maybe a Chinese man from Wales, Ian. You’ll be in good company. He’s a climber; he’s been to the summit of Mount Kenya and to Everest Base Camp, and both are over seventeen thousand feet. I’ll email him the change.”
She added what I wanted to hear: “If the weather holds, you’ll leave Camp II at 1:30 a.m.—it will be dark! But you’ll climb Ararat under the light of a full moon.”
Before the trek could be confirmed, it needed a few more participants to make the trip financially worth the company’s while. Amy sent a note one day saying she’d had an inquiry from a “New York fellow. Architect. Sounds fit for the climb. Name’s Goran.” I received another email four days later, saying that “Charles of Ireland” had signed on. Then, to complete the team, “Patricia from Canada and the Dutchman Nicholas. They are coming together. He lives in Toronto.”
Our expedition was beginning to gel.
We are told that those who live at the foot of great mountains are often the last to climb them. Mount Ararat reinforces that idea. Although ancient oral and written accounts tell of Noah’s Ark landing there after navigating a flood-ravaged Earth, there is no record of anyone ever having climbed to the top of this dormant volcano before the nineteenth century. For millennia, the people living in Ararat’s shadow believed the mountain was un-climbable. Its year-round cap of snow and glaciers protected it, dissuading even those who gazed upon its heights on a daily basis.
For many centuries, locals believed that their gods would not let the mountain be climbed to the top—ever. (This didn’t mean that the mountain was never climbed, however; historical documents do reveal that its slopes1 were walked on.) Religious edicts from local Christian or Islamic authorities forbade approaching the sacred summit until the mid-1800s. Eventually, attitudes changed. Aided by monks and Kurdish shepherds, locals began welcoming visitors seeking to unravel the mystery of Ararat.
The early explorers of Ararat were therefore of two kinds: mountaineers, anxious for an exceptional climbing experience, and searchers, hoping to find evidence of Noah’s Ark.
There are many notable ascents of Mount Ararat. In 1829, the German scientist Friedrich Parrot led the earliest expedition to successfully ascend the craggy slopes. Russian Colonel Iosif Khodzko reached the top in 1850, as did an 1856 British expedition led by Major Robert Stuart. The Americans arrived with Oliver Crosby in 1951, but were forced to abandon their mission 150 feet (50 meters) from the summit as daylight faded and Crosby determined, “We had to get ourselves off of three thousand feet of snow and ice before dark.”
The Frenchman Fernand Navarra’s summiting of Ararat in the middle of the last century became ensnared in controversy around a relic he claimed to be from Noah’s Ark. Treks in search of the Ark in the 1970s and 1980s were also made by US astronaut James Irwin, whose trips attracted the thrust and parry of both religious traditionalists and non-believers, scientists siding with each. In contemporary claims, a Sino–Turkish team announced in 2010 that carbon dating of a wooden construction they found on the mountain confirmed it to be a part of the biblical Ark. That team’s ongoing pronouncements have been greeted by insatiable public curiosity.
Along with these more well-known ascents, numerous documentarians, geologists, searchers dubbed as “Arkeaologists,” and self-promoting fabricators have all taken to Ararat’s slopes, with varying degrees of success. Whether they are credible explorers or fact-distorting charlatans, their stories are primers for those either seduced by Mount Ararat’s fabled history or seeking an exhilarating experience in mountaineering.
If Ararat itself has gained celebrity status over the decades, it’s undoubtedly because of its connection to Noah, whose story of surviving a global flood plays a significant role in Abrahamic religions. Here’s one translation of Hebrew text, from the Book of Genesis:
God paid mind to Noah and all living-things, all the animals that were with him in the Ark, and God brought a rushing-wind across the earth, so that the waters abated.
The well-springs of Ocean and the sluices of the heavens were dammed up, and the torrent from the heavens was held back.
The waters returned from upon the earth, continually advan
cing and returning, and the waters diminished at the end of a hundred and fifty days.
And the Ark came to rest in the seventh New-Moon, on the seventeenth day after the New-Moon, upon the mountains of Ararat.
The “mountains of Ararat” refers to a range, located in the eastern end of Anatolia, not just the region’s namesake edifice. Yet Mount Ararat gets all the attention as the presumed landing site of Noah’s Ark, gaining prominence through mistranslation and interpretations. It has been nicknamed in a dozen different ways, including the Mountain of the Deluge or the Mountain of the Flood, the Mother Mountain, or even the Mother of Mountains. In Turkey, “The Holy Mountain” has been known as Ağrı Dağı, translated as “Steep Mountain,” or as “Mountain of Pain,” as well as Agri Dagh, “Mountain of the Ark.” In Arabic it is Nûh’s Mountain, or Kuh-e-Nûh, while in Armenian it is Masis. Kurdish designates it the Fiery Mountain: Çiyayê Agirî.
Looking northward to the Ararat mountains' southern approach, the access route taken by the author's expedition. Mount Ararat at 16,854 feet (5,137 m) and Lesser Ararat at 12,782 feet (3,896 m) are the heights referenced herein (although also widely used are 16,945 feet [5,165 m] and 12,877 feet [3,925 m], respectively). All measurements include the thick, snow-covered ice cap.
“Ararat” itself is a version of Urartu, the earlier kingdom name. Both labels can be taken to mean Armenia. But no matter what name is used; in the minds of many, Ararat itself remains The Forbidden Mountain.
It quickly became clear during my research and preparations for this trip that traveling beyond Ararat would be complicated, as many of the border crossings were less than friendly and safe passage was far from guaranteed. From the peak of Mount Ararat, one can look on Armenia and Iran as well as the mountain’s current host country, Turkey. Visiting all three countries was necessary to my understanding the region. Iraq was not that far south either, and that intrigued me as well.
But traveling between these four countries is not just a matter of geographical logistics; it also involves staying on the right side of strained political relationships. Borders can lead to uneasy encounters. Prominent among these tensions is that between Turkey and Armenia. Their unresolved disputes can be traced back to what many now refer to as the Armenian Genocide, beginning during World War I, when over one million Armenians were killed or displaced in a single year. Sources vary, but many agree the Turkish government exterminated approximately 1.5 million Armenians in a seven-year period, starting as the Ottoman Empire fought through the war in cohesion with Germany, and continuing as the new Turkey evolved in the aftermath of World War I.
The Turkish-Armenians were Christian, while Turkey’s larger population was Muslim; established religious tolerance became strained. Along with that, land ownership and power over minorities were central to the conflict, as were neighboring geopolitical factors. Parts of the Armenian homeland were within the sphere of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans cast the Armenians as potential traitors who would side with the Allies to achieve independence after the war was won. In part, that was based on worry about Russian geopolitical expansion, including the courting of restless Armenians to fight the Ottomans against whom they’d protested throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth century.
Fearmongering about organized retaliation by the Armenians was used to justify preemptive action by the Ottoman forces. Now known as Red Sunday, in early 1915 numerous Armenian community leaders, academics, and elders were arrested and deported, many eventually killed, to prevent the remaining population from organizing to defend themselves. Many young Armenian males were sentenced to forced labor. Others were deported on mass marches into the Syrian Desert, in which the elderly and women and children were doomed to slow death by dehydration.
The abduction of Armenians was wide-ranging, systematic, and often brutal. Ottoman officials expropriated abandoned properties. The directing minds behind this effort had significant resources; the world’s press was manipulated, reportage was stifled, and swift retribution was meted out to any journalist who stepped out of line. The decimation of the Armenian population in Ottoman territory was thorough and devastating.
Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, characterized the Ottoman government’s actions as a “campaign of race extermination.”2 In his memoir, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, Morgenthau wrote, “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
In 1918, the war’s victorious combatants were anxious for spoils as they negotiated settlement. Boundaries from prewar times were often ignored, and nations were reconfigured after the conflict. One Axis government petitioning for peace did so while flexing its muscles strategically: Germany’s ally, Turkey.
In the vast lands where Armenia and Turkey had lived amalgamated at the start of World War I, citizenry and ethnicities overlapped. In the cosmopolitan Ottoman Empire, identities blurred; absent single nationalistic terms, one might, for instance, be an Armenian Kurdish Jew. While disputes had erupted both in towns and in the countryside, peaceful coexistence was also prevalent.
At the war’s end, during the reassessment of borders, many provinces initially proposed as part of the country Armenia were reconfigured amid jurisdictional decisions that ignored history in favor of expediency. Among the geographical assets removed from within the new Armenian borders was Mount Ararat. That Mount Ararat, a long-time symbol in Armenian culture, is no longer a part of Armenia looms heavily over strained relationships between the two countries, even today.
This was the cultural and political climate I would be entering.
For three months, my pre-trip regimen was one of securing climbing gear, undertaking a fitness routine, and conducting as much research as I could about the area where I hoped to travel. I began packing for a long journey in various climates, getting good medical advice, and procuring supplies for safety and comfort. My immediate focus needed to remain on being physically fit, well organized, and mentally prepared to ascend what William Bueler’s Mountains of the World calls “one of the most impressive volcanoes on earth.”
I read of climbers who arrived ill equipped for the rigors of Ararat, and was determined not to be among them. The mountain demanded to be taken seriously, and its weather could be harsh, surprising, and unforgiving. Ararat was said to “defend itself” against climbers. You had to be able to adapt, or you could suffer defeat. A repeated inference I read from various websites was that the climb was for the “professional or amateur mountaineer,” with the emphasis on “mountaineer.”
Acquiring the necessary equipment was straightforward, including getting the ice axe Zafer advised. I had a large backpack that could accommodate the various clothing as well as camping paraphernalia, and it could be pulled on wheels through railway stations and airports or saddled onto a horse when on Ararat. Added was a lightweight daypack with cushioned air vents where it would rest against my back. New hiking boots were purchased, which I broke in by wearing every other day on steep hill climbs and forest walks. Alternate days were for a three-mile run. An hour twice a week at a fitness center concentrated on building core strength and encouraged a mindset that sorted out a better diet and dashed alcohol intake. I woke each day and checked the computer screen’s photograph of Mount Ararat, its summit looking both intimidating and achievable. As the trip neared I could see myself standing in that photo, at the top.
When my travel plan came up in conversation, I heard the same question over and over again: “Are you going to look for Noah’s Ark?” Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. At first I responded with a smile and shouldered the question away with a “You can’t be serious” shrug, but frequently this was met with a sincere follow up query: “So, really, are you going to look for it?”
The well-known story
of the Ark is a fundamental piece of early history for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What I knew about it was either from childhood or from Navarra’s book, which had been written over fifty years before, and is clearly an exaggerator’s account. As I delved into the backstory for Noah’s Ark and the flood, I was surprised by much of what I found. I could not at the time imagine the context this would provide for my entire journey.
First among my surprises: the commonly referenced account of Noah’s Ark was not the first flood story of its kind. Interestingly, the oldest written testimony yet discovered regarding a “Great Flood” recounts similar details: the sparing of a chosen man and his family, the collection of a necessary range of animals and food stocks, and a deluge that destroys all other living things. This first report comes from the Sumerians, a society with shared settlements around Mesopotamia. The Sumerian account, finally written down around 2000 BCE3, tells an age-old oral history about a massive flood that would have occurred prior (perhaps well prior) to 2700 BCE. The ancient Sumerian account offers an intriguing provenance to Noah’s subsequent appearance in Hebrew written records as chronicled in the Book of Genesis, which many scholars say was redacted and prepared between 538 and 332 BCE. Additionally, a corresponding story of Nûh, his boat, a flood, and the saving of his associates, appears in the Qur’an (Koran) as transcribed between 609 and 632 CE. Might it be possible that all of these stories share an origin?
In addition to their common narrative themes, all of these Great Deluge narratives from this part of the world share a similar ending—the massive vessel that survives the flood, and whose occupants allow life to continue on land after the flood waters recede, eventually comes to rest on a mountain.
Full Moon over Noah's Ark Page 2
