Blog 12 – The volcanoes around the Van Lake

Lake Van is a big blue spot on the map of South-Eastern Turkey. More than thousand years ago, the eastern part of the lake lay at the heart of the Armenian empire.

Seven-times bigger than the City of Prague, the lake was created by an eruption of Nemrut Dag which blocked the natural outflow of the lake. We picked the two other volcanos around the lake for our next ski-mountaineering tours.

With folks from Třinec (a Czech town) around, you are never bored. We already learnt this in Sarajevo, where we bumped into a group travelling with the CK Alpina travel agency. The same can be said of Adam Svider and Tomas Lipka from the mountaineering club in Třinec, who we welcomed on board Submarine (our car) for a few days.

After squelching through the mud that lay beyond the last house in the suburbs of the small town of Gevas, we headed towards the couloir leading to the ridge of Candir Dag. We crossed an avalanche field, climbed the couloir and continued along the ridge towards the pre-summit. We intended to ski down one of the northern couloirs leading from the pre-summit of Candir Dag (3,300 metres). In order to enjoy the couloir while it was still bathed in sunlight, we didn’t continue on to the main summit (4,060 metres) further along the ridge.

We enjoyed great free-riding in perfect powder snow, during which Tomas showed us a nice salto using an advanced “hard landing” technique. As we were traversing back to the car, we could hear the sound of the muezzin from the mosque spreading on the water of the lake. On the horizon, the summit range of Suphan Dag (4060 metres) – our goal for the next day – was towering above the clouds.

The ascent of Suphan Dag is quite lengthy. It feels like climbing slowly through a long glacier valley in the Western Alps in summer. During our climb, as we were reaching the end of a wide couloir, Suphan Dag became covered by a coating of clouds. Later on, when my watch showed an altitude of 4,000 metres, the visibility was only a few metres and the wind had fully embarked on its afternoon “performance”. Given the conditions, we gave up our search for the main summit on the vast summit ridge. Instead, we decided to ski back down along our ascent tracks before they disappeared.

A bit lower down, inspired by Tom’s acrobatics demonstration of the day before, with one ski jammed under stiff snow I managed quite an “artistic” turnaround. As I was falling I stared at my knee, which was being twisted rather unpleasantly, and hoped for the binding to open … in vain.

Right now, giving my knee a little rest on the beach, I am enjoying great views of Suphan Dag and wondering how much new snow has fallen there in the last two days of bad weather. And at least Martin has a bird’s-eye view of the lake.
Now we’ll see what tomorrow will bring – the fabled Mt. Ararat or an adventurous visit to the wild mountains of Turkey’s far east?

 

#SkiToCloud

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Ascending through a couloir

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Avalanche field

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Little town of Gevas and the Van Lake underneath

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On the ridge

 

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Pre-summit of Candir Dag – the Van lake underneath
Photo by Tomas Lipka

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Great freeride from Candir Dag

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Great freeride from Candir Dag

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Great freeride from Candir Dag

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Traversing back to the car

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“Our” couloir

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Starting the climb to Suphan Dag– quickly before the mud melts..
Photo by Tomas Lipka

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Lengthy ascent

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Sticky snow… great training!

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Dancing in the storm – at 4000metres – somewhere very close to the summit of Suphan Dag

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Vulcano first aid
Photo by Tomas Lipka

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It´s kebab and ayran time. Bad weather is coming again

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Rest-days at the Van lake
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#SkiToCloud

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Martin paragliding

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Let´s see what will tomorrow bring