9th – Summit day

Like any other summit day arriving at the summit was amazing, coming back down was amazing and everything in between was "Oh my god who's idea was this???".

But I am getting ahead of myself.

We got up at 0400 after a night with winds similar to last night that fortunately quieted down before we came out of our sleeping bags. The campsite has increased in size so the constant noisy chaos has increased. This also means that more people are sleeping in random places in the building. When arriving for breakfast people were packed away in their bags on every available spot on the floor in the common room. We heard from those sleeping in the dorm that the floor there is also getting crowded.

We departed at 0510 at a comfortably calm pace. I felt much better than yesterday morning so I was feeling optimistic about the progress. Already half an hour into the ascent we could get rid of our headlamps and get rid of our warmest layers. The temperature was nice with a cool early-morning breeze.

The view an hour or so into climbing.

You can just see Damavand's shadow to the right.

Damavand's shadow clearly against the background.

Unfortunately I soon realized that the headache I thought I had gotten rid of started coming back in intervals; sometimes a gentle pressure, sometimes throbbing pain. It was not until the tour leader “suggesting” to take a couple of pain killers I finally got it under control (and it probably didn’t hurt I forced myself drinking extra during our hourly breaks) and I could continue without having to worry too much about that. But at one point it was very, very tempting to turn around.

Crossing the 5100m mark we passed by a frozen waterfall and the path steepened and turned into scrambling on rocks. Getting past this the environment opened up and you could see the path curving up towards the summit. Not having any known points of reference, it didn’t look nearly as far as it ended up being.

Nearing the summit.

Due to the wear and tear of the headache, constant rumbling stomach and not eating much from the snack bag that was handed out I was getting completely exhausted at this point. I was walking in the back of the group and the guide keeping up the rear started assisting with gently pushing/lifting my bag. I’ll admit it was very appreciated but I am a grown independent man, woman!

Damavand is a volcano, the tallest in Asia (and tallest point in Iran), and it’s releasing sulphur non-stop. Looking towards the summit with no clouds in the sky you will see what you think is clouds but actually is fumes being vented from the volcano. We had been informed the smell was horrible and made it near impossible to breathe but the truth was, though, that as long as you stayed out of the fumes you’d be fine. You obviously couldn’t avoid the smell but it was never as bad as it had been described. You should just keep in mind that small vents were hard to see and you could inadvertently walk straight through the fumes from these. Considering how bad the smell was from fumes that were barely visible I don’t want to know how it is walking through them when they are full white as they are from the main outlet.

Getting much easier to see how close you get when passing by the outlet.

Near the summit we passed the main volcano’s main outlet and due to the wind direction you could get almost as close as you wanted to the edge without feeling particularly uncomfortable (at least not as much as one would expect) and get a clear view.

Beautiful bright colors that were hard to see due to the fumes.

10 minutes later, at 1130, we arrived at the summit, very satisfied and personally I felt the best I had since departure, almost 6½ hours earlier. The summit itself was a small spot where you could get together and take group photos, but just behind a rock formation there was a large area where it was possible to walk around and get an unobstructed view in all directions of the surroundings. The weather was amazing; barely a breeze and only wearing two thin layers made it all even better. Therefore it was extra weird that our tour leader ordered us to leave after only 15 minutes. There were plenty confused opinions on this but unfortunately he did not budge. We started our descent and taking a different path down it was possible to walk/slide most of the way, making it a bit easier and faster than if we had had to take the same path as we had sued to get to the summit – especially taking the scrambling parts in consideration.

Summit photo of the group members currently present.

View from the summit.

View of the plateau behind from where we came up.

Descending was fairly uneventful; 2 people wanted to go down faster and went ahead, coming back in camp at 1345 and 1400 with the rest of the group arriving an hour later at 1500. The slow group, the last 3 people who had been behind us the entire day, returned around 1715, all having summited.

The rest of the day was spent on resting and kicking back. Having spent 10 hours getting up and down it was a relatively short summit day compared to some of the other I have experienced. Add to that that it was by far the warmest one I have done and we started late it was a very nice walk (especially in hindsight).

On return it was obvious that the camp had increased in size and still doing so. Usable space is so limited on the rocky surface that people have even started setting their tents on the helipad. The camp with the main building has 6 toilets available which has been fine until now, but now, because tomorrow is a holiday and the following day weekend locals travel up here to spend their two days off. One in the was told by a local that app 500 people has arrived to camp (and only a few went down) which means that the line to the toilets have increased from non-existent to 10-15 minutes long. It also means the tent situation has gotten more chaotic – if you came back to an area after just a few minutes of being away you’d see changes, the frequency of tents getting removed and set up is frantic. At sunset it did seem as if the tents on the helipad had been removed, but the pathway to the helipad, being flat and established, is now completely filled up with tents.