Damavand I

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On last Friday Nick and me finally started. We had bought food for six days, two types of bread, oats, raisins, dried apricot, cookies, spread cheese, jam, and honey. We left some luggage at the guest house, packed all nessesary cloth, Nick's tent, the sleeping bag, and a new bought wolly hat. Our first night we sleept in the tent near the lowest shelter which is a mosque at 3050m. It was not to cold and the next morning we freshly started climbing to the next shelter. The next and also final shelter is at 4100m which is quite high already. We tried to find a place to put up our tent on the way, but there was no good location, everything to steep. So we sleept the second night at 4100m already. That was to high for me. After passing 3500m we had started to feel the altitude and the fewer oxigen. During the daytime that is not a big problem, you just walk slower and everything is more exhausting. But don't try to sleep there. The once the body rests it starts to produce more red blood cells to cope with the fewer oxigen. This fianally makes the blood more viscous and the first sign of the altitude sickness came to me over night: a bad headache. For sure I did not try to climb higher the next day. The headache got better during the day and I waited hoping to aclimatize. Nick was better than me, but still on the first day he stayed with me and we planed to climb the final part on the next day. But in the night the headache returned to me and Nick got up at four in the night to join another group without me. I got up later with no other option but to go down, disappointed that I could not even try to go to the sumit. I told Nick I wanted to wait for him at the mosque shelter until the next day. That day Nick made it to the sumit which is a very tiering ascent from 4100m to 5671m. He was very exhausted afterwards, also because it had been cloudy, very cold and snow had fallen.

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Photos

Mount Damavand
Sure, my companion was with me...

Self-Suficient Camping
The tent we sleept in is a small one man tent: like this we had no problem keeping warm ;-)