Hi guys, not much activity here so I will leave some notes on our tracking on Damavand summit using the easiest Southern trail.
On 2nd of October 2016 we arrived to Reineh village near the volcano and stayed in Iranian mountaineering federation base (2000 meters above sea level
) Comfortably sleeped there and had shower. Next day we paid $50 permision fee and took a ride to Goosfand Sara (3000 m) and then continued up to Camp 3 New Hut at 4200 m.
This took me probably 5 hours slowly going up with a backpack 19 kg and I was exhausted in the end so you may choose to use mules to get your staff up. I was very short of breath approaching the New Hut. Other guys felt different symptoms too mostly headache.
We stayed there for a night in a small room we rented upstairs. It was from -5 to -9 at night on this location, shelter has no heating and toilet is a smelly outdoor adventure.
The next morning we had acclimatization climb to 4900-5100 m (some people were more fit than the others and got to Frozen Waterfall) The path was not always clear and visible sometimes it's like handful of trails going up in different directions.
Again we felt like sh*t because of height and returned to the shelter.
The next morning 5th of October was to get up early and go to the summit. We started 4:40 a.m. and it was much easier to ascend comparing to the previous day. But starting from 5K the path became harder we had lost and found the right way just after half an hour of climbind bad terrain. Also I suffered problems with my vision. Tears started to drop from one eye then another causing me to stop and mop the glasses and regain sight. Short of breath we approached 5350 m rock near the trail for the last stop before summit.
Approximately there we met some people from the other groups who did not make it to the summit (the last 300 m) because of altitude sickness. They were resting or descending.
The top of Damavand was covered with yellowish sulfuric deposites, small stinky smokes coming from under the surface and blood-sweat-and-tears of mountaineers making the last efforts to rich the summit. It was hard to breath so we put on simple face masks. It appeared to have no signifficant effect on sulfur smell whatsoever. 8 hours ascending and we were on top, that was far worse comparing to 6 hours our Iranian collegues had told us it should take but nevertheless we all made it no one left behind
Crater was cover with glacier but no snow on the trail so we never had to use crampons. The sun was warming us almost all the way and with no strong wind it could have been quite comfortable there if you somehow forget strong headaches and stuff. We made a few pictures and video of smoking new small "exhaust pipe" of Damavand and started descent. It took us 3 hours to get to New Hut and rest.
I think we were lucky to have nice weather but closer to the noon clouds start to form and surround the summit so I would recommend to start ascend earlier maybe at 3 a.m. if you want to have nice view down to the valley.