Anticipating our success with Kubi, and to distract our minds with something a little less serious, Goran jested, “Then if we have an extra day after the summit, let’s go looking for Noah’s Ark.”
* * *
In the early 1970s, after rocketing into space aboard Apollo 15’s Endeavour, American astronaut James Irwin drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle around on the Hadley-Apennine region of the moon, logging more hours on its surface than anyone before him.
When the experienced media spokesman made the first of his several mountaineering visits to Ararat, eleven years had elapsed since his moon landing, and he turned his communication skills toward new messaging. Every trip the one-time aerospace research pilot took to Mount Ararat was part of an organized search for evidence of his childhood hero, Noah, and “his water-weary family.” Unfortunately for Irwin and his climbing party, during an excursion to Ararat in 1982, tensions were high between Turkey’s border territory and Russian forces to the north. Russian surveillance and the incessant jamming of Turkish radio channels by Russian soldiers, a technique that courted disaster on the mountain, stalked Irwin’s entourage, deliberately compromising their walkie-talkies.
Two members of their expedition would succeed in making the summit on their first attempt. They’d come from Doğubeyazit, approaching the south face as we were now doing. They rose at 2:30 a.m., left town, and made their way to the 11,500-foot meadow near Lake Kop. Irwin described their hike as “looking for the prow of the ark behind every rock.” From there they were bound toward the Ahora Gorge, considering a search of the North Canyon.
The lead American authority on Noah’s Ark at that time was amateur historian, hobbyist researcher, and ardent bibliophile Eryl Cummings. Cummings, who’d already climbed Mount Ararat seventeen times, invited Irwin to lead this 1982 expedition. It was almost the former astronaut’s last adventure.
Irwin’s near-death on Ararat is a reminder of the uncompromising terrain the mountain has to offer. On the morning that he and other climbers were set to summit, the fifty-two-year old Irwin grew fatigued around the 13,000-foot level. He bid the others go on ahead while he rested. Against his own directives for safety, he headed off alone to return to base camp. Tiring more, he spotted a route he took to be a timesaver across the snow. He crouched to unpack his crampons and sat down to harness them onto his boots. It was the last alert thought he had until he regained consciousness hours later, at the bottom of the snowfield. By then it was dusk. Irwin described himself to be “in a pile of sharp rocks and I was a bloody mess.”
Astronaut James Irwin’s Christian beliefs put him in tune with the creationist logic that God had designed the earth with age “built in”—for example, creation of a mountainside containing the fossils of sea creatures (as an alternative to the theory of evolution and the effect of plate tectonics). He held that the common translation of Hebrew texts is “without error” and does not contradict established geological information. During the lunar landing, Irwin’s tasks included collecting moon rocks. From one sample, petrologists determined that the moon and the earth were created at the same time. Irwin was credited with discovering “the Genesis Rock.” Portrait © Simon Carr.
A falling boulder had crashed against Irwin’s skull, propelling him into a tumbling slide down the snow. He broke five teeth. Rocks and ice had lacerated his legs and hands. The mountainside had carved at his face, head, and neck. He was weakening from blood loss, as dehydration and cold set in. Irwin managed to pull his sleeping bag from his backpack and crawl in. He huddled in the dark against the steep and slippery mountainside, crouched behind a boulder for shelter, protected from the sporadic tumbling of rocks from above.
Alarms were not raised until the summiteers at the 14,000-foot camp connected with the Lake Kop base below, over radio channels still hampered by the Russians. Eventually everyone realized Irwin was missing. The rescue mission began immediately, but with great uncertainty about where to start looking. Their search area was somewhere on Mount Ararat, “one of the largest land masses of any single mountain in the world,” according to Irwin himself. The searchers wondered if Russians “disguised as shepherds” had kidnapped him. No one knew he’d drifted off the trail around the 12,500-foot level, let alone that his descent route was distorted by a long fall off the track. Teams descended the mountain from the high camp like lines of longitude, while others fanned out across the Parrot Glacier’s lower rim.
“James?!” The call went out repeatedly, echoing false hopes: “James … James …” Incredibly, one of the echoes reached him. He responded weakly and was heard. Attempts to climb down to him resulted in serious accidents for two other climbers. Finally he was reached. Bandaged on-site, he was transported to camp and loaded on a horse. A four-hour, bone-jarring carryout followed. A Turkish commando team ensured that they arrived at a military first-aid post, where Irwin was transferred to a hospital.
Undeterred, Irwin returned to Ararat later that same year, following up on a reported sighting of Ark evidence. He was back again in 1983, and flew around Mount Ararat several times in a Turkish army airplane, taking hundreds of photographs, particularly of the Ahora Gorge. The crew “didn’t sight anything that looked like Noah’s Ark,” and decided to conduct a ground search. They camped on the northeast side of the gorge, exploring from there. Irwin remained enthusiastic throughout, always reporting with confidence that this expedition or the next would discover evidence of the Ark and put a world of disbelief to rest.
Irwin made a final trip in 1986, then announced that his days on the mountain were over. “It’s easier to walk on the moon. I’ve done all I possibly can, but the Ark continues to elude us,” he said. “I think it is time others take up the search.”
* * *
Brightly colored plastic stools were arranged around our dinner table, similar to the previous night. The table was made using planks left behind by other groups, and I wondered how often a table was burned when the firewood that was carried in ran scarce and the cold became unbearable. Colored cups decorated the table, our tents were all red, and our packs were a crayon box of hues. It was as though a rainbow carpeted our campsite.
We five sat at one end of the table. The other end was not yet occupied, as only a few of the Armenians had made camp, and they were still waiting for the others. It’d been half an hour since Kubi had shown up with four men, faster walkers he’d hived off from the Armenian group. When they arrived, he had turned to us and raised his shoulders, as if to shift stress off them and up to the clouds. Then he returned down the mountain to help the other guide ensure that everyone got to camp.
When the four Armenians finally sat down at the table, realizing it might be a while before the rest of their group joined them, we shared stories of how the day’s climb had bushed us all. There was an ease between everyone, much like our muscles relaxing after a climb.
“This is Armenia’s mountain,” said one climber I’d overheard was a man of the cloth. The day’s climb had removed any erect bearing such a religious role might give someone; he was as weary and slouched as the rest of us. “We have been forced to share it,” he added, and the tone struck me as somewhat defeatist. It was then I realized there was nothing particularly “Turkish” about Ararat, save for the border. Everything I’d read, aside from the geographic and political victors of present day, affirmed my view that I was hiking in or near ancient Mesopotamia, and historic Urartu, and a one-time Greater Armenia—place names themselves as old as the name “Ararat.” The Armenians were our hosts on Mount Ararat, more so than the Kurds and the Turks.
Niecit emerged from the mess tent with two large bowls in his hands. Looking quickly at the mountain peak, as though asking a blessing for the meal, he served spaghetti again, this time with chicken and a sauce that was white but not creamy. Tomato soup arrived in a cauldron carried by a teenage boy and was scooped into tin bowls at each place setting. Our table dug in, not waiting for the others to arrive. Polite restraint was too much to ask of
hungry people.
Daylight was leaving. The mountain above gave a ragged bow our way as though it knew this was the last we’d see of it; next, we hoped, was a midnight climb through the dark with restricted visibility. Clouds played as though taking turns to pirouette protectively for the massif, denying us a panorama of our lofty goal.
Camp II: The angle of the expedition’s tents contemplated the prevailing winds as well as the mountain’s lack of hospitable terrain. Lesser Ararat is in the distance.
Goran pointed up to where we’d be climbing later and sang, “The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming.” As if conjured by his song, ten Russians descended the trail in loose formation. They had an array of equipment styles—some backpacks appeared quite large for the ascent, while a few climbers had only small satchels strapped to their waists. Yet this irregularly outfitted group could only have achieved the summit if they were fully reliant on one another’s skills. Clearly they’d shared the loads and the responsibilities among each person, dependent on ability. They slid into their higher campsite, disappeared into their tents, and went quiet.
The remaining Armenians and Kubi arrived. The climbers freshened up, and soon they too had eaten, but Kubi was nowhere to be seen. Darkness enveloped our camp, and the five of us went back to our respective tents, fidgeting with our gear in anticipation of a midnight climb. We knew that if Kubi was game to go, we’d be heading up the mountain. I had to admit, as excited as I was at the prospect of summiting in only a few hours, I couldn’t help feeling like something was off, that it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“I wanted to summit under tomorrow’s full moon,” I admitted to Ian.
“I heard that,” he replied. “Amy told me it’s why we changed the original schedule and left the day we did.”
“And …”
“And what? And now you’ll miss that?” He repeated his earlier concern. “You can wait. We can all wait. But what if tomorrow the weather is terrible? If tonight we cannot make it, we have tomorrow night as backup. It’s better this way.”
I had to admit he was right. The romantic in me had lost perspective.
The air and the climb had drained me of energy. I napped. It might have been 7:30. I woke to see Ian snoozing. He snored. I crawled out of the tent and, walking around, saw the Russians’ campfire a few hundred feet up the hill. They were sitting on the ground, in a circle, singing. It was pleasant, not boisterous, and it sounded, to my ears, like patriotic or religious songs. I walked up the trail toward them. As I neared the group, a burly man who was wrapped in a blanket and seemed too big to have climbed this mountain shouted to me, “Come here! Come over!” As I got closer, he said, “Come in,” and made space in their circle for me to sit near him.
“My name is Mutashat,” he said, “and this is my son.” He pointed further. “Him, my cousin.” And so it went, around the circle.
“Did you summit Ararat?” I asked.
Mutashat spoke in Russian to the men and they laughed. Yes! They were cheerful after their triumph and boastful. They all raised their mugs, toasting their success.
One of them saw that I did not have a mug. “For you,” he said, handing me one. I sipped. It tasted hot and smoky, black and strong, sweet tea from a Russian caravan. They had me in their thrall.
I asked, “What was it like?”
Again in Russian, the older man translated my question, and they rapidly swapped stories all at once, as if I would be able filter their individual excitement. The patron of it all calmed everyone down. He stared at me with eyes hooded in weariness yet aglow with satisfaction. “First, I ask you. Do you summit tonight?”
“That is the plan.”
“Then I cannot tell you what it feels like, because that would spoil it. We wanted to summit night before. We could not, with wind. Rain. Waiting was difficult. Two stayed behind when rest of us summited.” He sipped his tea. His eyes lost their tiredness. “You will feel on top of the world.”
Through his grin he told the other climbers in Russian what he’d told me in English. Their heads bobbed. I’m sure what I heard next was a Russian chorus of, “You will feel on top of the world!” They leaned away from the fire in laughter, as though it was the greatest line imaginable, and continued celebrating among themselves. Only when I stood to leave, much later, did they realize that their guest was still among them. I returned to our camp feeling buoyed by unmistakable good wishes in a language I could not understand.
ELEVEN
FINAL ASCENT
“The noble thing about Ararat is not the parts but the whole. I know nothing so sublime as the general aspect of this huge yet graceful mass seen from the surrounding plains …”
—James Bryce, Mountaineer, Transcaucasia and Ararat
It must have been after nine o’clock in the evening when Kubi appeared from within the cook’s tent, rubbing his eyes and stretching his arms, waking from a nap of his own. He finally sat down for dinner. He’d had only a little time to himself when the five of us gathered round his chair, anxious. Ian decided this was a good time to make our pitch: “Kubi, are you tired from the day’s hiking, or do you feel like attempting the peak tonight?”
“Tired, yes, of people.” Kubi looked at us and smiled. “Nico was brave to know that you five will make it better without him.”
Encouraged, Ian continued. “We’re acclimatized. We don’t need another day to explore around here. We want to climb tonight, to summit. We are ready.”
“You look ready,” Kubi said, keeping our spirits up. “Tonight we climb. Go prepare your ascent packs before sleep. Get rests. Remember energy—juice and chocolate bars. Make easy to access. It will terribly be cold. Check batteries on headlamps. You all headlamps?”
“We will be ready,” Patricia announced.
I reckoned we’d summit under a bright moon and not need headlamps.
“I ask once more, all needs,” Kubi added. And he went through the checklist: crampons, walking sticks. He did not need to cover the basics—gloves, extra socks, first aid, and toiletries—but he did remind us, “Anyone taking altitude pills, it is now you should take for final ascent.”
“The Armenians,” he sighed, “are set in hearts to climb tonight too. They should wait day. But they are of mind to go. I tell guide leave with them before we go.”
As we left him to his coffee and contemplation, he said, “I wake you after midnight. Be readying by 12:30. We will away at 1:30 in summit hope. Hope of seeing the sun rise over Iran and Armenia and Turkey, all at once.”
I wasn’t sure I would be able to sleep at all. There was a sweet, exhilarating smell of risk in the air. I’d read enough about success sidestepping mountaineers on this peak to realize danger loomed and failure was its companion.
“It’s midnight,” Ian announced from his sleeping bag next to me, his hand shaking my shoulder. He bolted upright with an experienced alertness. “Get up.”
I opened my eyes wide.
“I can’t sense the moon,” he said. He leaned forward, pulling on his jacket and loosening the tent’s flap to peek outside. “Covered sky,” he announced.
Kubi walked our way, his steps crunching pebbles. “You are eager,” he said.
There was no need for him to waken any of us. Just after 1:00 a.m., we assembled. Goran came to our tent, ski goggles braced over his toque and flaps down to his ears, a small pack hung at his left side. Charlie wore a thick ski jacket with a hood that he’d pulled up and over a front-rimmed hat. Topping it all was his headlight, shining brightly into my eyes. I reached over and flipped it downward. “You might have to go first,” I joked, “and light the mountainside for us.” He took a swig from one of his two water bottles and wondered aloud, “Might this freeze?”
Patricia was dressed in a puffy white parka, a white woolen hat, dark winter pants, and black boots. It was good camouflage. Goran said to her, “Don’t fall off the trail, or we might not find you in the snow.”
Ian had a trained eye and comp
rehensive kit, and was the most ready of us all: sunglasses tucked into the outer chest pocket of a red ski suit. His backpack was the largest of anyone’s. It looked to include everything he might need, from first aid to extra warmth.
Goran clapped both his hands on my shoulders. “Rick, you all geared up?”
“Ready,” I said, not entirely certain this was true.
“Look up there!” Patricia pointed up the mountain to a rising line of lights, the headlamps of the Armenian group.
Kubi said, “They go too fast too early. They have unequal fitness.”
We shuffled and stomped our feet, anxious to climb and wanting to leave his rift with them behind.
“About Spaniards,” Kubi said, “I talk with Spanish guide. He says group very fit and experienced. They are eight. Six of them climb with guide; two will stay down. All are here for some of team to summit. They decamp same time we do.” He pointed to a place above us in the dark. “Expect them to pass us, and give way when they near.”
“I think we should beat them up the mountain,” Goran said.
“A race?” Charlie asked.
To me this sounded like the type of unnecessary fun that enlivens an escapade and makes a motivating mood.
“Either we follow or we lead. If we go now, they’ll be on our heels right away. If our stride is good, we can take the lead and keep it,” Ian said.
“Let’s go,” Patricia said. The challenge was on.
* * *
Mount Ararat brooded. The clouds broke up now and then, revealing occasional stars. The moon, swallowed by a heavenly mist, cast a low glow toward the peak, or at least the angled view we took in.
As we started to hike, the incline from camp covered ground we’d walked earlier in the evening, as our nerves settled. Large rocks and narrow footholds soon forced us to use our walking poles for leverage and balance.
Our goal was to reach the summit before sunrise. That meant over a three-thousand-foot elevation gain, climbed on a mile and a half of switchback trails ending with a straight-on ascent. Kubi looked back at us frequently as we jostled into rhythm, no doubt thinking through the dangers and inconveniences. If one of us had to return, we’d all have to return.
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