Mount Aragats

It may not look that big, but I am standing at about 3200m at this point.  This is Mount Aragats, the tallest peak in Armenia at 4090m.  I took a trip there early in my visit here.  There are only about 2 or 3 months where it is not covered in snow, and even then there remain little glaciers here and there. 

Bordering a small lake on Mt. Aragats at 3200m is this physics institute.  It is here that I stayed for my 2 nights on the mountain.  I must admit that I did not climb the first 3200m.  I hired a driver to get me this far and then climbed from here.  Among other things they study cosmic rays here and are quite a notable institute.  Funding is hard to come by these days and so they are happy to take visitors like me who pay $15 a night or $30 with food.  I was quite pleased to find that I had a warm bed, toilets and running water!  The physicists live up here year round and are essentially cut off from civilization during the winter months.

I started my climb at 6 in the morning in pitch black and arrived back at the institute at about 5 in the evening - a long, but enjoyable, day.  I watched the sun rise over the mountain and then continued on my way to the top.  Aragats is made up of 4 peaks: north, south east and west.  This is the north peak, the largest of the 4 - so it was of course this one that I had to climb.  The mountain is an old volcano, and so has a large crater in the middle.  It is from this crater that I took the picture.  It doesn't look that high, but it was about a 1000m climb from here to the top.

This is the top (short about 10m) of the north peak.  At this point I was utterly exhausted and had to be very careful not to slip and fall, which would have been quite unfortunate.  Much to my mother's chagrin, I did the hike alone.  But not to worry mom, I had at least a couple days of food, water, first aid supplies and enough clothes to keep me warm through a large snow storm (which happened to start just as I was climbing out of the crater :).  The thing that struck me the most was how peaceful it was up there.  Overall a great trip!