Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 1 of 2) / The Russian Provinces

by H. F. B. Lynch

Fig. 35. Our Kurd Porters on Ararat.

A little stream trickles down the valley, but sinks exhausted at this season before reaching the sirdar’s well. In the early summer it is of the volume of a torrent, which winds past the encampment, like a serpent of silver, uttering a dull, rumbling sound.[5] It is fed by the water from the snow-fields, and there is said to be a spring which contributes to support it at a height of nearly 11,000 feet.[6] After half an hour’s walk over the stony surface of the platform—the ragged herbage burnt yellow by the sun—we entered the narrows of the mountain saddle, and followed the dry bed of this rivulet at the foot of rocky spurs. The tufts of sappy grass sparsely studded on the margin of the water-course gave place, as we advanced, to a continuous carpet of soft and verdant turf; here and there the eye rested on the deep green of the juniper, or the graceful fretwork of a wild rose tree quivered in the draught. The warm rays flashed in the thin atmosphere, and tempered the searching breeze. The spurs on our right descend from the shoulder of Great Ararat, from the causeway of which it forms the head, and are seen to diverge into two systems as they enter the narrow pass. The one group pushes forward to the Little Ararat and is lost in confused detail; the other and, perhaps, the larger system bends boldly along the side of the valley, sweeping outwards towards the base. At three o’clock we reached a large pool of clouded water, collected on a table surface of burnt grass; close by is an extensive bed of nettles, and a circle of loose stones. This spot is, no doubt, the site of a Kurdish encampment, and appeared to have been only recently abandoned by the shepherds and their flocks. The further we progressed, the more the prospect opened over the slopes of Ararat; we were approaching the level of the tops of the ridges which skirt the valley side. Passing, as we now were, between the two Ararats, we again remarked that the greater seemed no higher than the lesser, so completely is the eye deceived. In the hollows of the gully there were small pools of water, but the stream itself was dry.

By half-past three we had left the gentle water-course, and were winding inwards, up the slope of Great Ararat, to cross the black and barren region, the girdle of sharp crags and slippery boulders which is drawn round the upper seams of the mountain, like a succession of chevaux de frise. We thought it must have been on some other side of Ararat that the animals descended from the Ark. For a space of more than three hours we laboured on over a chaos of rocks, through a labyrinth of troughs and ridges, picking a path and as often retracing it, or scrambling up the polished sides of the larger blocks which arrest the most crafty approach. The Kurds, although sorely taxed by their burdens, were at an advantage compared to ourselves; they could slip, like cats, from ledge to ledge in their laced slippers of hide. In one place we passed a gigantic heap of boulders, towering several hundred feet above our heads. The rock is throughout of the same character and colour—an andesitic lava of a dark slaty hue. A little later we threaded up a ravine or gully, and, after keeping for awhile to the bottom of the depression, climbed slowly along the back of the ridge. I noticed that the grain or direction of the formation lay towards east-south-east. From the head of this ravine we turned into a second, by a natural gap or pass; loose rocks were piled along the sides of the hollow, which bristled with fantastic, but unreal, shapes. Here a seated group of camels seemed to munch in silence on the line of fading sky, or the knotty forms of lifeless willows stretched a menace of uplifted arms. In the sheltered laps of this higher region, as we approached our journey’s end, the snow still lay in ragged patches, which increased in volume and depth.... The surface cleared, the view opened; we emerged from the troubled sea of stone. Beyond a lake of snow and a stretch of rubble rose the ghostly sheet of the summit region, holding the last glimmer of day.

It was seven o’clock, and we had no sooner halted than the biting frost numbed our limbs.[7] The ground about us was not uneven, but an endless crop of pebbles filled the plainer spaces between little capes of embedded rock. At length upon the margin of the snow-lake we found a tiny tongue of turf-grown soil—just sufficient emplacement to hold the flying tent which we had brought for the purpose of this lofty bivouac near the line of continuous snow. We were five to share the modest area which the sloping canvas enclosed; yet the temperature in the tent sank below freezing before the night was done. Down the slope beside us the snow water trickled beneath a thin covering of ice. The sheep-skin coats which we had brought from Aralykh protected us from chill, but the hardy Kurds slept in their seamy tatters upon the naked rocks around. One among them sought protection as the cold became intenser, and we wrapped him in a warm cape. It was the first time I had passed the night at so great an elevation—12,194 feet above the sea—and it is possible that the unwonted rarity of the atmosphere contributed to keep us awake. But, whether it may have arisen from the conditions which surrounded us, or from a nervous state of physical excitement inspired by our enterprise, not one among us, excepting the dragoman, succeeded in courting sleep. That plump little person had struggled on bravely to this his furthest goal, and his heavy breathing fell upon the silence of the calm, transparent night.

The site of our camp below the snow-line marks a new stage, or structural division, in the fabric of Ararat. Of these divisions, which differ from one another not only in the characteristics presented by each among them, but also in the gradient of slope, it is natural to distinguish three. We are dealing in particular with that section of the mountain which lies between Aralykh and the summit, and with the features of the south-eastern side. First, there is the massive base of the mountain, about 10 miles in depth, extending from the floor of the river valley to a height of about 6000 feet. At that point the higher seams commence to gather, and the belt of rock begins. The arduous tracts which we had just traversed, where large, loose blocks of hard, black lava are piled up like a beach, compose the upper portion of this middle region, and may be said to touch the lower margin of the continuous fields of snow. The line of contact between the extremities of the one and the other stage partakes of the nature of a transitional system, a neutral zone on the mountain side, where the rocky layers of the middle slopes have not yet shelved away, nor the immediate seams of the summit region settled to their long climb. In this sense the fields of stone about our encampment, with their patches of last year’s snow, are invested with the attributes of a natural threshold at the foot of the great dome. The stage which is highest in the structure of Ararat, the stage which holds the dome, has its origin in this threshold, or neutral district, at an altitude which varies between 12,000 and 13,000 feet.

Very different in character and in appearance from the region we were leaving behind was the slope which faced our encampment, robed in perpetual snow. You have pursued the ramifications of the lava system to the side of their parent stems; and in place of blind troughs and prospectless ledges a noble singleness of feature breaks upon the extricated view. You command the whole summit structure of Ararat on the short, or gable side; and the shape which rises from the open ground about you is that of a massive cone. The regular seams which mount to the summit stretch continuous to the crown of snow, and are inclined at an angle which diverges very little from an average of 30°. The gradients from which these higher seams gather—the slopes about our camp—cannot exceed half that inclination, or an angle of 15°. Such is the outline, so harmonious and simple, which a first glance reveals.... A more intimate study of the summit region, as it expands to a closer view, disclosed characteristics which were not exactly similar to those with which we had already become familiar in the neighbourhood of Sardar Bulakh. It was there the north-eastern hemisphere of the mountain—if the term may be applied to the oval figure which the summit region presents—displayed to the prospect upon the segment between east and south-east. Our present position lay more to the southward, between the two hemispheres; we were placed near the axis of the figure, and the roof, as viewed from our encampment, bore nearly due north-west. The gigantic causeway which at Sardar Bulakh was seen descending on our left hand from the distant snows, now rose on our right, like a rocky headland, confronting a gleaming sea of ice. But, when the eye pursues the summit circle vanishing towards the west, you miss the sister forms of lesser causeways, radiating down the mountain side. It is true that the greater proximity of our standpoint to the foot of these highest slopes curtailed the segment of the circle which we are able to command. This circumstance is not in itself sufficient to explain the change in the physiognomy of the summit region, as we see it on this side. In place of those bold, black ribs or ridges, spread fanwise down the incline, furrowing the snows with their sharp edges, and lined along the troughs of their contiguous bases with broad streaks of sheltered nevé, it seems as if the fabric had fallen asunder, the surface slipped away—all the flank of the mountain depressed and hollow, from our camp to the roof of the dome. The canopy of snow which encircles the summit—a broad, inviolate bank, unbroken by any rift or rock projection for a depth of some 2000 feet—breaks sharply off on the verge of this depression, and leaves the shallow cavity bare. From the base of the giant causeway just above us to the gently-pursing outline of the roof you follow the edge of the great snow-field, bordering a rough and crumbling region which offers scanty foothold to the snow, where the hollow slope bristles with pointed boulders, and the bold crags pierce the ruin around them in upstanding combs or saw-shaped ridges, holding slantwise to the mountain side. On the west side of this broad and uncovered depression, near the western extremity of the cone, a long strip of snow descends from the summit, caught by some trough, or sheltering fissure, in the rough face of the cliff. Beyond it, just upon the sky-line, the bare rocks reappear, and climb the slope, like a natural ladder, to a point where the roof of the dome is lowest and appears to offer the readiest access to the still invisible crown.[8]

In the attenuated atmosphere surrounding the summit every foot that is gained tells. An approach which promises to ease the gradient at the time when it presses most seems to offer advantages which some future traveller may be encouraged to essay. We ourselves were influenced in the choice of a principle upon which to base our attack by the confident counsels of the Armenian, which the local knowledge of the Kurds confirmed. We were advised to keep to the eastern margin of the depression, by the edge of the great snow-field. You see the brown rocks still baffling the snow-drifts near the point where the deceitful slope appears to end, where on the verge of the roof it just dips a little, then stands up, like a low white wall, on the luminous ground of blue.

The troubled sea of boulders flowing towards the Little Ararat, from which we had just emerged, still hemmed us in from any prospect over the tracts which lay below. The flush of dawn broke between the two mountains from a narrow vista of sky. The even surface of the snow slope loomed white and cold above our heads, while the night still lingered on the dark stone about us, shadowing the little laps of ice. Before six o’clock we were afoot and ready; it wanted a few minutes to the hour as we set out from our camp. To the Swiss was entrusted the post of leader; behind him followed in varying order my cousin and Wesson and myself. Slowly we passed from the shore of the snow-lake to the gathering of the higher seams, harbouring our strength for the steeper gradients as we made across the beach of boulders, stepping firmly from block to block.

The broad, white sheet of the summit circle descends to the snow-lakes of the lower region in a tongue, or gulf of deep nevé; you may follow on the margin of the great depression the western edge of this gleaming surface unbroken down the side of the cone. On the east the black wall of the giant causeway borders the shining slope, invading the field of perpetual winter to a height of over 14,000 feet. The width of the snow-field between these limits varies as it descends; on a level with the shoulder, or head of the causeway, it appeared to span an interval of nearly 200 yards.[9] The depth of the bed must be considerable, and, while the surface holds the tread in places, it as often gives and lets you through. No rock-projection, or gap, or fissure breaks the slope of the white fairway; but the winds have raised the crust about the centre into a ribbon of tiny waves. Our plan was to cross the stony region about us, slanting a little east, and to mount by the rocks on the western margin of the snow-field, adhering as closely as might be possible to the side of the snow. It was in the execution of this plan—so simple in its conception—that the trained instinct of the Swiss availed. Of those who have attempted the ascent of Ararat—and their number is not large—so many have failed to reach the summit that, upon a mountain which makes few, if any, demands upon the resources of the climber’s craft, their discomfiture must be attributed to other reasons: to the peculiar nature of the ground traversed, no less than to the inordinate duration of the effort; to the wearisome recurrence of the same kind of obstacles, and to the rarity of the air. Now the disposition of the rocks upon the surface of the depression is by no means the same as that which we have studied in connection with the seams which lie below. The path no longer struggles across a troubled sea of ridges, or strays within the blind recesses of a succession of gigantic waves of stone. On the other hand, the gradients are as a rule steeper; and the clearings are covered with a loose rubble, which slips from under the feet. The boulders are piled one upon another in heaps as they happened to fall, and the sequence of forms is throughout arbitrary and subject to no fixed law. In one place it is a tower of this loose masonry which blocks all further approach; in another a solid barrier of sharp crags, laced together, which it is necessary to circumvent. When the limbs have been stiffened and the patience exhausted by the long and devious escalade, the tax upon the lungs is at its highest, and the strain upon the heart most severe. Many of the difficulties which travellers have encountered upon this stage of the climb may be avoided, or met at a greater advantage, by adhering to the edge of the snow. But the fulfilment of this purpose is by no means so easy as might at first sight appear. You are always winding inwards to avoid the heaps of boulders, or emerging on the backs of gigantic blocks of lava towards the margin of the shining slope. In the choice of the most direct path, where many offered, the Swiss was never at fault; he made up the cone without a moment’s hesitation, like a hound threading a close covert, and seldom if ever foiled.