Features on a map of Mount Ararat and what they are

The summit of Great Ararat

The top of Great Ararat is not a sharp peak. Bryce describes it as “a small undulating plateau of snow, with two rounded heights or bosses rising out of it”. He saw no trace of a crater. Parrot, looking up from below, described the summit area as a crown of permanent snow and ice reaching down nearly two-thirds of a mile vertically, whose lower edge rises and falls with the ground. On the north side it runs down to about 14,000 feet (about 4,270 m).

The two rounded tops are close together. Bryce judged the difference in height between them at about thirty feet. Hermann Abich reached the eastern top in 1845 and turned back in threatening weather, six minutes’ walk short of the western one (see climbing history).

Little Ararat

Little Ararat, to the south-east, is a much more regular shape. Bryce calls it “an elegant cone or pyramid” with steep, smooth sides. Parrot, who climbed it on 27 October (8 November) 1829, found the top shaped like “the truncated end of a quadrangular pyramid”. It was an irregular four-sided surface of perhaps 150 paces across, with rocky eminences at least 50 feet high near its edges. The streaks that run down its sides and are visible from far away turned out on the spot to be real furrows in loose, sandy lava soil. Parrot thought they were probably cut by spring snowmelt.

Unlike Great Ararat, Little Ararat is not permanently snow-covered. Parrot found it quite free of snow in September and October.

The saddle between the peaks: Sardarbulakh

The two peaks join in a broad, uneven, grassy saddle. Bryce describes it as a sloping plain with “lumpy volcanic hillocks”. He gives heights from about 7,000 feet (2,130 m) up to 8,818 feet (2,688 m), the latter being the pass towards Bayazid. In the middle lay Sardarbulakh, 7,514 feet (2,290 m), with a spring and, in 1876, a Russian Cossack station. Bryce used it as the base for his ascent. Kurdish shepherds camped on this saddle in summer. Parrot, who crossed it in 1829, called the grassy ridges joining the two peaks one of the most dangerous passes out of Persia.

The name survives. The Ağrı Governorship places the Serdarbulak plateau on the eastern side of the main mountain, next to Little Ağrı.

The Great Chasm and the glacier

The most striking feature of the north-eastern face is a deep cleft that runs into the heart of the mountain. Bryce calls it “the Great Chasm, sometimes the Valley of St. Jacob”, after the small monastery that stood near its mouth. He estimated it at nearly 9,000 feet deep, surrounded by huge precipices, and compared it with the Val del Bove on Etna. Parrot thought it looked less like a crater than a cleft, “as if the mountain had been rent asunder at the top”.

The head of the chasm holds what Bryce considered the only true glacier on Ararat. It is nearly a mile long and 200 to 400 yards wide, almost covered with fallen stones, and bears a moraine. Its lower end lies at about 8,000 feet (2,440 m) and its upper end at nearly 10,000 feet (3,050 m). Bryce describes a similar but smaller chasm on the south-western side. The chasm was the source of the rockfall of 1840 described on geology and nature.

Kip Gholl

On the north-western side, about four miles north-west by west of the summit, lies the rounded plateau Bryce calls Kip Gholl, explaining gholl as the Tatar word for a lake. Here waters from the snow above have formed a small pond, about half an acre in size, at nearly 12,000 feet (about 3,660 m). The pond made a patch of good grass among fallen blocks. Parrot camped here on his second attempt in 1829. Bryce thought it the best high station for climbing the mountain from the north-west. Several crater-like hollows can still be made out on the heights around it.

Side cones

Ararat is covered with secondary volcanic cones and craters. Bryce singles out several:

• Tach Kilissa, the most conspicuous cone, on the east-south-east slope between Sardarbulakh and the summit. From the plain it looks “like a huge tooth stuck on the mountain side”. Its top is about 13,000 feet (3,960 m).
• Takjaltu, a huge rounded, dome-shaped spur of 7,091 feet (2,161 m) on the outer slopes, on the way up from Aralykh. Bryce considered it one of the largest groups of side cones.
• A cluster of craters on the ridge between Great and Little Ararat, behind Sardarbulakh, some of them looking, in his words, “as fresh as if they had been burning last week”.

Lakes, springs and woods

Water is scarce on the mountain surface. Bryce describes streams from the snows vanishing into the loose volcanic ground. The named water features are few: the Kip Gholl pond, the spring at Sardarbulakh, the spring above the site of St Jacob’s monastery, and an alpine lake Bryce calls Balykh Gholl on the south-western slope facing Bayazid.

Trees are scarcer still. The one real wood grows at the northern foot of Little Ararat. Parrot describes it as low birches in a patch about a mile round, none taller than about ten feet. Bryce puts it at about 7,500 feet.

Settlements at the foot

The places named around the base belong to different periods:

• Aralykh, at the north-eastern foot, starting point of Bryce’s climb. In 1876 it was a row of Russian wooden barracks. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia gives the plain there as 790 m.
• Arguri (Arghuri) and the monastery of St Jacob, at the mouth of the Great Chasm. Both were destroyed in 1840, and a few huts, New Arghuri, later stood lower down.
• Doğubayazıt, the district town on the south-western plateau, called Bayazid or Bayazed by nineteenth-century writers.
• Topçatan and Eli, named by the Ağrı Governorship on today’s southern approach. From Eli the page describes camps at about 2,800 m and 4,200 m, as general descriptions rather than surveyed positions (see route names).

Sources

1. James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, 3rd ed., London: Macmillan, 1878, ch. VI pp. 211–241 and ch. VII pp. 242–253. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
2. Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cooley, New York: Harper and Bros., 1846, ch. VII pp. 144–145, ch. XII pp. 254–258. Internet Archive. Read 25 September 2026.
3. Ağrı Valiliği, Ağrı Dağı (page dated 14.09.2020). Checked 14 September 2026.
4. «Арарат, горы», Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (1890–1907). Wikisource. Read 14 September 2026.