Armenia Rock Climbing
Six-sided columns ran up basalt ramparts like a stack of Grecian pillars. A dike of perfect gold stairs split a strange, 300-foot tower of gray choss. Snowy mountains with slopes of varicolored grasses fell precipitously to orchards, sedge and clear rivers. Gorges of volcanic rock were cloaked in fog.
Climbers threaded up the pillars and through the hanging hexagonal blocks, placing tiny cams. Little yellow rain jackets negotiated the gold steps. It looked like the best trad climbing area in the world.
I see dozens of photos every day, but these struck like a bell. Before I saw Sam Bie’s images, all I knew about Armenia was that it produced wrestlers and chess champions. After seeing the shots, I wanted to know more.
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Mkhitar Mkhitaryan, 30, is a mountain guide and Armenia’s only active route developer. He taught himself to climb six years ago after watching an old video of Patrick Edlinger soloing in the Verdon Gorge broadcast on Armenian television.
“I hadn’t any clue of rock climbing,” he wrote in a recent e-mail. “I imagined myself Patrick Edlinger and landed down badly from 12 meters height.”
Mkhitar pole-axed his leg, but after a year of recovery he started combing the Internet, looking for more reliable information on how to climb. He learned some basic techniques and discovered film of Dan Osman, the late California climber known for his outrageous speed solos and soaring rope jumps.
Mkhitar is also Armenia’s only rope-jumper.
“[At first] I learnt everything theoretically,” he wrote of his climbing, “as I had no gear to practice. Then I heard about Spitak Rescue Center"— a community search and rescue holdover from the days of Soviet occupation—"and became a member. They had some handmade chocks and cams and some 15-year-old ropes. As rock shoes I bought a pair of galoshes, the ones by which the Russians used to climb up to the 1980s.”
Will Nazarian, an Armenian/American climber from Bend, Oregon, visited his father’s birth country for the first time last year and developed an immediate friendship with “Mkhik,” who he described as “very excitable, endlessly motivated to climb,” and “kinda runty, like me.”
Nazarian, an active climber and first ascentionist with 25 years experience, was blown away by the “stacks of splitter cracks all over.” After establishing one 5.10, he left Mkhitar his Bosch drill, his rack of cams and an admonition to get the word out about Armenian climbing.
Soon after Will’s visit, Mkhitar came up with the idea for an Armenian climbing festival to promote the development of new routes on the many untapped walls. He posted a little blurb about the event on his website uptherocks.com and waited, hoping that someone would show up.
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Sam Bie, a French climbing photographer, was looking for a project when a small news item popped up on a Russian climbing website announcing the Armenian First Ascent Open Festival. Along with the announcement were “lousy pictures of aesthetically hallucinating walls.” Unfortunately, Bie couldn’t drop everything and make the festival, but a year later he and top climber Alex Chabot arrived in Armenia with the intention of sending new routes and documenting their discoveries.
When Mkhitar skyped his “bro” Will and told him that Bie and Chabot were on the way, Nazarian wrote back, “These Frenchies are going to put Armenia on the rock-climbing map, dude.”
Sure enough, the French added 10 new pitches to a country that even now has only 15 routes.
Bie wrote, “The reality exceeded my imagination. Suspended hexagonal columns, cut sharp, like glass ceilings. Huge and aesthetically breath-taking. Better than all expectations.”
The climbs ranged from 5.9 trad to 5.12b trad and 5.12c sport. Chabot, 28 and with over 20 World Cup titles under his belt, braved the precarious-looking terrain, deftly punching tiny cams between the columns, and pushed the existing standard for trad and sport climbing two full number grades. He also opened Mkhitar’s eyes to what is possible.
“I hope to try these climbs at the end of this season,” Mkhitar wrote. “Just need to get a bit of a dare, as on the overhanging sections the broken columns are so scary.”