YAAN,KANGARCHAL,CHALEKI

The plan

The primary plan was to climb Chaleki, Kangarchal and yaan, camp close to Yaan summit and then continue to KHanehbon peak and atlast Siyalan!
We were thinking abouta 5 day program to do the whole plan.

Reality

A five day program would probably be enough for such a plan in summer but when we started climbing from Eselmahaleh village toward Daryasar it didnt take much time to find out that in such deep snow things wouldnt be as easy as we were wondering.

The First Day

We left Tonekabon at 2pm and started climbing from eselmahallehat 3. Normally in summer it takes less than an hour to get to Daryasar with heavy packs. Even in winters and with snow we had never spent more than 1:30 in this route. But this winter was something really different.
After 3:30 hours without any stopping we got to Daryasar! It was 6:30pm and was going to get dark so we changed the plan of getting to Teraj-e-Sera in the first day and camped in Daryasar. Tomorrow showed that it was a very good decision.

Second Day

We started Trekking at 7:30am. This time we knew that we couldnt plan anything for sure so we decided to make decisions step by step. The first step for the second day was to get to Teraj-e-Sera. This is a 1:30 hour way in summer and had never been longer than 2 hours in winters. This time it took us about six hours. The snow was very very deep. It was the same hard for the first one and the last in our small group! Even when you were the last one you had to go deeper than the one person before you into the snow. This was my hardest time in snow ever! But also funny. So when we got to Teraj-e-Sera it was about 2pm and we couldnt reach the ridgeline in an apropriate time for camping. We spent the second night in Teraj-e-Sera.

Night in Teraj-e-Sera

It took about an hour to dig the spring out of snow and made us more tired but it was sure better than melting the snow for cooking,tea and for tomorrow!
At night we went to the other tent and we had a long speech about the rest of the program due to the new situation of the mountain.
We decided to start early in the morning for tomorrow with light backpacks, climb Chaleki, Kangarchal and Yaan, come back to the camp and stay the night again in the same camp.
Also we wanted to use the cold of the night which could make it possible to walk on the snows not to swim in them. If we could get to the ridgeline before the sun melted the night ice we could make the ascend much easier.

3rd Day

We woke up at 3:30am and had a great breakfast with enough tea to drink as many glasses as you wanted!!
At 4:45am we were all out of our tents, ready to go. The plan worked this time and we didnt have much hardship getting to the ridgeline.When I say deep snow I mean it! Look at Mohsen.

Chaleki

We were on Chaleki at about 9am. After the photo and congratulating we left the summit to south again to get to Kangarchal. Between Chaleki and Kangarchal we left some of the extra cloth that were not necessary in the day anymore.

Kangarchal

Now we were ascending on the northern slopes of Kangarchal. We summited at about 11am. The amazing thing was the new view of Yaan from Kangarchal summit which is very beautiful. Thus Kangarchal and Chaleki have almost the same elevation but Yaan is more nice from Kangarchal. Although what you can see from kangarchal is not the summit of Yaan.

Yaan

We left Kangarchal toward Yaan at 11 and summited Yaan at about 1:40pm.
I can never forget these moments. This was the first successful winter attempt on Yaan ever. Many have tried in the last years but they never summited due to bad weather or choosing a bad route. Two of our friends in this team have tried two times before and so they were really happy that they had made it this time.
Yaan's specifications makes it much harder than the normal 3500m peaks. Any mistake could cause death and on the other hand the last 2 hours on Yaan slopes were really beautiful. The last parts of the route represents a high diversity of views and paths which doesn't let the mountaineers to get tired at all.
While on the summit you have a great memorable panorama view of Alborz and CAspian sea.

3rd Night

We started descending at about 2:15pm and at last at about 7pm we got to the camp. In the way back we also suffered alot from the deep snow in some parts.
We had a great night together singing and talking. The weather was clear and it was not too cold(-7degrees in centigrade). We went to our sleeping bage at about 1am.

The Last Day

We woke up at 5am. and left at about 7. It was a nice slow trek to Eselmahalleh village onther sunshine and clear weather. We left the village at about 10am and were at home for lunch. Home lunch, a dream comming true!

In This trip

There was a wolf footprint arround us all the 3days from Daryasar. We were not lucky to see it and maybe take some photos. The wolves in this area mostly don't live in groups and are always alone so a 5 member team is almost safe, But in eastern Alborz or in Zagross you'd better be a bigger group in winter.
The solitude of the mountain was unbelivable this time. We didnt see anybody for four days. That was really great. We also listend to the birds and wind for 5 minutes in Daryasar before leaving it. In summer you may not have such a chance!

Images

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