Andrew Behesnilian Andrew Be fruitful, multiply… and ski the earth! Andreas Hofer realises his childhood dream – to ski Mount Ararat 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 Ithe 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 common ways to earn more than 1,000 square kilometres, raises its vile daggers, danger and a living are still animal glorious snowy crest out of a green, sea-like delhi-belly! When the sun husbandry, beekeeping landscape with untamed drama. Solitary, There is of course little rose in the early and the smuggling of solemn, it dwarfs every other elevation around. truth in this. People are petrol and drugs. Drug From the top of the cone-shaped, dormant armed nowadays with morning hours trafficking is so notorious volcano, at 5137 metres, one can see the plains nothing more harmful on the other that many locals change of Anatolia, Iran, Armenia and the land-locked than cell phones, and side of Mount the licence plates of their territories of Azerbaijan. food is wholesome - if cars to Istanbul or Ankara For many centuries, Mount Ararat – the not vegetarian. And the Ararat, its cone- codes in order to avoid national pride of the Armenians on the other business of abducting shaped shadow continuous harassment by side of the border and archaeological obsession tourists, for many years police and the military. If of born-again Christians from all over the world successfully conducted pointed in a you are Kurdish, and since - was considered unscalable. Hard to believe by the PKK, the Kurdish perfect pyramid the tragic exodus of all when one witnesses the well-oiled tourism resistance, is going out of Armenians pretty much machine today, which hauls hundreds of tourists fashion. The last German over the plains everyone is Kurdish here, each week up and down the mountain, summer tourists were taken west-northwest you have trouble enough and winter. hostage in 2007. There writing poems – let alone I had wanted to ski this mountain since I are still machine guns into Central driving a van full of heroin. was little. Like most Austrian children, I had a of all sizes and brands Anatolia (Until recently, the mere model of Noah’s Ark to play with. The keel of on display in high street use of Kurdish language my floating toy-container was rather ungainly shops, at good prices, but was considered subversive – 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 But for the maddening traffic, travel in All night, a snowstorm had pulled on the 28 | skiclub.co.uk Raiders of the lost ark mountain Sc h o r I had wanted to ski this The first man to successfully negotiate Mount s c h Sc mountain since I was Ararat was the German mountaineer Friedrich hic Parrot (1929). And even he only succeeded at hl little. Like most Austrian his third attempt. Many people have climbed it children, I had a model since, including James Bryce, a British scholar and of Noah’s Ark to play politician, escorted by Tsarist Cossacks when he came to Ararat in the summer of 1876. Others with. The keel of my include James Irwin, the US astronaut, looking floating toy-container for God and the remains of the Ark. He broke his leg and barely survived. The canniest was the was rather ungainly – Chinese documentary film-maker Yeung Wing Cheung, who - in April 2010 - after years of even I could tell that I reluctantly decided to throw in the towel, take careful preparation, and to world-wide tabloid the thing had to run the skins off ym skis and start the fun in earnest: acclaim, ‘found’ Noah’s Ark in an ice cave under skiing 2500 vertical metres in perfect powder. I aground eventually, the glacier. This was just a year after he had imagined that perhaps Noah’s sons might have carried up truck-loads of old planks himself, with spilling plastic men and done the same descent (but perhaps not in considerable effort, and employing a host of winter) in the seventh hour of the seventh day animals in pairs all over local porters. It was not only a brilliant con, but of the seventh month – or thereabouts! Once an impressive mountaineering achievement too, the world. you’ve seen the mountain in winter, it’s hard to considering how much trouble it took me just to imagine Mount Ararat dripping and steaming flaps and strings of our tent, and threatened to ancient Persian villages shone like glowing of the other skiers pulled ahead, frustrated by after The loF od. carry my rucksack and me up the mountain. 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 We looked out over the velvet-green 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 trickled down our necks. The wind had hours later, dawn unveiled the icy peak of 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 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 was chanted in the Armenian language. 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 plains 2000 metres below, the dough. We reached the first 5000m peak some six 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 vee ning 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 streets and industrial areas sun rose in the early hours on the 5137 metres. Suddenly a fierce wind sprang up, ornate patterns our turns had left on hot se demolished or crumbling away. We looked at far into the darkness. other side of Mount Ararat, its and clouds raced in from the steep slopes to unbelievably long and steep slopes. the mountains we still wanted to ski, glittering The Iranian border cone-shaped shadow pointed the north, tearing on clothing and equipment, The nows cover of Artos (3515m) had in alluring white. And we talked excitedly about JIMMY GREEN MARINE - BEER LANDAU SKI & SPORT - FOLKESTONE 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 LOCKWOODS - LEAMINGTON SPA NEVISPORT - NATIONWIDE bright halogen plains west-northwest into 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 NOMAD TRAVELLER STORE - LOUGHTON OUTDOOR GEAR SHOP - HOMEBARN and neon, Central Anatolia. defrost properly for many weeks to come… on Lake Van instead. Kush-Adasi island was we weSALOMONRUNNING.COMre to have succeeded. The al ke changed OUTDOOR TRADERS - ABINGDON and some Beyond 4800 Only 20 metres below the peak, struggling densely populated by thousands of gulls its blue nowSALOMONTRAILS.COM, from sapphire to sky-blue, then PENROSE CAMPING & LEISURE - TRURO REYNOLDS OUTDOOR CENTRE - SUNDERLAND metres, some for breath, with my nose now frozen rock-hard, who defended their nests with noise and to turquoise, then silver. When the sun set SAIL & SKI - SHREWSBURY/ CHESTER 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 Epic: Akdamar island’s 10th century cathedral resembling gleeful laughter as they hit their which was a rippled sheet of gold.