Read more - Austrian Travel Writer Specialising in Skiing

Andrew Behesnilian
Be fruitful, multiply…
and ski the earth!
Andreas Hofer realises his childhood dream – to ski Mount Ararat
I
t is awe-inspiring to set
wished to go there and to have a look for
Turkish Kurdistan is safe, good value and
eyes on Mount Ararat for
myself. That I didn’t ski Ararat earlier was due to
great fun. Admittedly, it is a devout part of
the first time: this colossus
my provincial prejudice. Eastern Anatolia was
the world, and somewhat archaic: the most
of a mountain, with a base of
to me synonymous with
more than 1,000 square kilometres, raises its
vile daggers, danger and
glorious snowy crest out of a green, sea-like
delhi-belly!
landscape with untamed drama. Solitary,
There is of course little
solemn, it dwarfs every other elevation around.
truth in this. People are
From the top of the cone-shaped, dormant
armed nowadays with
volcano, at 5137 metres, one can see the plains
nothing more harmful
of Anatolia, Iran, Armenia and the land-locked
than cell phones, and
territories of Azerbaijan.
food is wholesome - if
For many centuries, Mount Ararat – the
not vegetarian. And the
national pride of the Armenians on the other
business of abducting
side of the border and archaeological obsession
tourists, for many years
of born-again Christians from all over the world
successfully conducted
- was considered unscalable. Hard to believe
by the PKK, the Kurdish
when one witnesses the well-oiled tourism
resistance, is going out of
machine today, which hauls hundreds of tourists
fashion. The last German
each week up and down the mountain, summer
tourists were taken
and winter.
hostage in 2007. There
I had wanted to ski this mountain since I
are still machine guns
common ways to earn
When the sun
rose in the early
morning hours
on the other
side of Mount
Ararat, its coneshaped shadow
pointed in a
perfect pyramid
over the plains
west-northwest
into Central
Anatolia
a living are still animal
husbandry, beekeeping
and the smuggling of
petrol and drugs. Drug
trafficking is so notorious
that many locals change
the licence plates of their
cars to Istanbul or Ankara
codes in order to avoid
continuous harassment by
police and the military. If
you are Kurdish, and since
the tragic exodus of all
Armenians pretty much
everyone is Kurdish here,
you have trouble enough
writing poems – let alone
driving a van full of heroin.
was little. Like most Austrian children, I had a
of all sizes and brands
model of Noah’s Ark to play with. The keel of
on display in high street
my floating toy-container was rather ungainly
shops, at good prices, but
– even I could tell that the thing had to run
they collect dust these days. Why hold tourists
behaviour - an 'un-Turkish act' - and punished.
aground eventually, spilling plastic men and
to ransom when you can fleece them instead?
Many Kurdish poets were incarcerated.)
animals in pairs all over the world. I desperately
28 | skiclub.co.uk
But for the maddening traffic, travel in
(Until recently, the mere
use of Kurdish language
was considered subversive
All night, a snowstorm had pulled on the
Raiders of the lost ark mountain
Schorsch Schichl
I had wanted to ski this
mountain since I was
little. Like most Austrian
children, I had a model
of Noah’s Ark to play
with. The keel of my
floating toy-container
was rather ungainly –
even I could tell that
the thing had to run
aground eventually,
spilling plastic men and
animals in pairs all over
the world.
The first man to successfully negotiate Mount
Ararat was the German mountaineer Friedrich
Parrot (1929). And even he only succeeded at
his third attempt. Many people have climbed it
since, including James Bryce, a British scholar and
politician, escorted by Tsarist Cossacks when he
came to Ararat in the summer of 1876. Others
include James Irwin, the US astronaut, looking
for God and the remains of the Ark. He broke
his leg and barely survived. The canniest was the
Chinese documentary film-maker Yeung Wing
I reluctantly decided to throw in the towel, take
the skins off my skis and start the fun in earnest:
skiing 2500 vertical metres in perfect powder. I
imagined that perhaps Noah’s sons might have
done the same descent (but perhaps not in
winter) in the seventh hour of the seventh day
of the seventh month – or thereabouts! Once
you’ve seen the mountain in winter, it’s hard to
imagine Mount Ararat dripping and steaming
Cheung, who - in April 2010 - after years of
careful preparation, and to world-wide tabloid
acclaim, ‘found’ Noah’s Ark in an ice cave under
the glacier. This was just a year after he had
carried up truck-loads of old planks himself, with
considerable effort, and employing a host of
local porters. It was not only a brilliant con, but
an impressive mountaineering achievement too,
considering how much trouble it took me just to
carry my rucksack and me up the mountain.
flaps and strings of our tent, and threatened to
ancient Persian villages shone like glowing
of the other skiers pulled ahead, frustrated by
rip the canvas apart. When we were woken by
fungus in the hills. We set off, deliberately
our slowness, and not struggling so much with
Yildirim, our guide, and zipped the tarpaulin
slowly, for the last 1700-metre push to the
the ever-thinning air as I was. Yet they were well
plains, smooth as the baize of a billiard table,
It was as if gifted children had kneaded them
open just an hour after midnight, snow
summit, a row of two dozen headlights of fellow
into retirement age and didn’t look terribly fit.
to the jagged crags and rocky jaws south of
from plasticine. In September 2010, for the first
blanketed our boots and sleeping bags and
skiers snaking up the slope behind us. Two
They must surely have skied at high altitude
Dogybeyazit, across to the accordion-folds of
time in nearly a century, a Sunday service was
some days before today’s mission. It takes at
rock in the east, and the crumbling basalt and
held in this church. Bells rang and the liturgy
was chanted in the Armenian language.
trickled down our necks. The wind had
hours later, dawn unveiled the icy peak of
after The Flood.
We looked out over the velvet-green
stopped, and a starry sky, illuminated
Tendurek (3400m), whose last eruption in
least a couple of days to train a flatlander’s
glittering obsidian of the dozing volcanoes along
by a boastfully bright Milky Way, lit up
1855 crated the vast and barren lava fields
body to cope with the oxygen deprivation of
the horizon. And could almost imagine – instead
Mustafa, our guide, and Schorsch, my
the slopes rising above us. In the dark
which fill the plains of Agri like crumbly
high altitude.
of the biblical high tide - the ear-shattering noise
travelling companion, sipped Turkish coffee
and deafening din of earth’s violent creation.
with me as we sat on small stools under
town of Dogubeyazit was a host
Other chains of snow-covered
hours later. On the other side of the summit
Looking back up the long, steep slopes we
blossoming almond trees. The evening sun
of orange city lights, drawing
ranges appeared. And when the
glacier, a small crest marked the final ascent to
had just skied, I felt deeply satisfied with the
shone on nameless graves: some erect, others
5137 metres. Suddenly a fierce wind sprang up,
ornate patterns our turns had left on those
demolished or crumbling away. We looked at
and clouds raced in from the steep slopes to
unbelievably long and steep slopes.
the mountains we still wanted to ski, glittering
plains 2000 metres below, the
streets and industrial areas
far into the darkness.
dough.
We reached the first 5000m peak some six
sun rose in the early hours on the
other side of Mount Ararat, its
in alluring white. And we talked excitedly about
The Iranian border
cone-shaped shadow pointed
the north, tearing on clothing and equipment,
barracks were lit by
in a perfect pyramid over the
and instantly deep-freezing my fingers, toes
melted so quickly during our last few days that
how lucky we had been to climb Ararat in good
and the tip of my nose. My toes would not
we decided to charter a boat to the islands
weather - but we meant in truth how proud
defrost properly for many weeks to come…
on Lake Van instead. Kush-Adasi island was
we were
to have succeeded. The lake changed
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bright halogen
and neon,
and some
plains west-northwest into
Central Anatolia.
Beyond 4800
metres, some
Epic: Akdamar island’s
10th century cathedral
Only 20 metres below the peak, struggling
for breath, with my nose now frozen rock-hard,
It is not clear to what purpose God created Lake
Van.
The snow cover of Artos (3515m) had
densely populated by thousands of gulls
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its blue now,
from sapphire to sky-blue, then
who defended their nests with noise and
to turquoise, then silver. When the sun set
rumpus and soiled our sweaters with precision
behind Nemrut (3050m), our small steamer
droppings, their furious cackling chatter
was already sailing close to the shore, on a lake
resembling gleeful laughter as they hit their
which was a rippled sheet of gold.
targets. Akdamar island, once the residence
of King Gagik I (908-944 AD) and seat of the
Catholicos, the head of the Armenian Church
for 800 years, boasts a 10th-century cathedral,
the only building still intact - a gem of medieval
masonry. Built from stern brownstone, the
TAMZARA TRAVEL, director Mustafa Arsin
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[email protected] +90 544 555 35 82
Yildrim Beyazit OEZTUERK, mountain guide,
[email protected]; www.alpinturkey.com
Mehmet Kusman, the world’s only fluent interpreter
façade is adorned with elaborate and intensely
and translator of cuneiform languages; allegedly
rich reliefs of animals long extinct, garlands of
reads, writes and speaks Urartian, which ceased to be
grapes, bands of vines and peacocks, and kings
written after 585 BC. www.mehmetkusman.com
and saints with plump bodies and saucer eyes.
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Peoples came and went. The Urartians, mighty
warriors and Assyrians’ deadly foes, built their
fortresses and irrigation canals around the lake constructions which can still be seen today. The
Seljuk left their extensive graveyards with ornate
mausoleums and finely chiselled tombstones and
early Ottoman beys built gracile mosques, bridges
and proud palaces.
With a coast line of 430km the lake is certainly
vast. It looks more like an ocean than a lake. Its
saline, oily waters are the breeding ground for
pearl mullet, a delicious creature fished around the
lake in late spring. Its shores are roamed by flocks
of countless white sheep, and a large variety of
migrating birds hide in its reeds. High mountains,
Artos (3515m), Supan (4058m) and Nemrut
(3050m), complete with a chairlift and a
sapphire-blue crater lake, mirror their snowy peaks
in the waters of the lake with a certain vanity.
The monastery of Varagavank, seat of
archbishops, burial ground of kings, place of
learning and one thousand years of worship, is a
cowshed now; under its crumbling arches a tractor
is parked and where once devout students were
studying the scriptures, a cock, a calf and a mangy
shepherd dog are slowly making their way over a
dung-heap. A village has grown out of the disused
walls - shelled to oblivion in 1915. In some of the
houses limestone slabs with squiggly, small
crosses chiselled on them are all that remains of
the vanished cathedral. Animals use the marble
stoup as a trough.
The Armenians, who with sadness and
stubbornly consider Lake Van their ancient
homeland, have terraced this land for 2000 years
and cropped it with wine and walnuts, which have
all but disappeared.
They had festooned the hills
JIMMY GREEN MARINE - BEER
around theLANDAU
lake with
countless
SKI
& SPORT -chapels,
FOLKESTONE
- LEAMINGTON
SPA been
monasteries LOCKWOODS
and churches,
which all have
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reduced to
rubble
by
time
and
the
atrocities
of
NOMAD TRAVELLER STORE - LOUGHTON
OUTDOOR
GEAR SHOP
HOMEBARN
racial hatred
one hundred
years-ago.
Now the
OUTDOOR TRADERS - ABINGDON
Kurds livePENROSE
here andCAMPING
hope for&recognition
and
LEISURE - TRURO
peace.REYNOLDS OUTDOOR CENTRE - SUNDERLAND
SAIL & SKI - SHREWSBURY/ CHESTER
On a weekend extended families - women in
head scarves, men with octagonal caps and cell
phones – would flock to the shores of the lake to
do what all Anatolians do on a good day: they
spread blankets under willow trees, in the grass
near a creek, or on the gravel of the beach, and
relish a picnic with barbeque - insects humming
and children running noisily about. A cool breeze
from the lake will give respite even in the
oppressive heat of summer.