Climbing history of Mount Ararat: what the first published accounts record

1829: Friedrich Parrot and Khachatur Abovian

The first recorded ascent was led by Friedrich Parrot, a professor at the University of Dorpat (today’s Tartu). His expedition report, Reise zum Ararat, was published in Berlin in 1834; its title page names Wassili Fedorov, Maximilian Behaghel von Adlerskron, Julius Hehn and Karl Schiemann as members of the expedition. An English translation by W. D. Cooley, Journey to Ararat, appeared in New York in 1846.

Parrot made three journeys towards the summit. James Bryce, summarising the record in 1878, wrote that he was beaten back twice and succeeded on the third attempt. Parrot’s own account places the party on the top at about a quarter past three in the afternoon on 27 September 1829, which he also gives as 9 October. The two dates are the Old Style and New Style forms of the same day; the Ağrı Governorship’s page uses 9 October.

Parrot lists six people on the summit:

• Friedrich Parrot;
• Khachatur Abovian, then a young deacon of Echmiadzin, who also acted as interpreter;
• Alexei Sdrovenko and Matvei Chalpanof, soldiers of the 41st Yäger regiment;
• Ovannes Aivassian and Murat Pogossian, villagers from Arguri.

The spellings above follow the 1846 English translation. Fedorov, often mentioned alongside Parrot, was not in the summit party: Parrot writes that Fedorov made simultaneous barometer readings at the monastery of St James so that the summit reading could be compared.

According to Bryce, Parrot worked from the monastery on the edge of the Arguri chasm, camped at a place Bryce spells Kip Gholl, and reached the top over the snow slopes of the north-west side.

Why the 1829 ascent was doubted

Bryce records that Parrot’s success was disbelieved in the villages around the mountain and by several people of science and position in Russia and elsewhere, and that Parrot died before his claim was generally accepted. Two of the Armenian companions, when questioned, said they had climbed high but had seen higher tops above them. Bryce himself considered the account clear and largely confirmed by later observers.

The episode is a useful reminder that a summit claim is a documentary question: who was present, what they measured, and what witnesses later said.

1834 to 1856: the next ascents

Bryce lists the following ascents after Parrot:

• 1834 — Spassky-Avtonomov. Bryce counts this as the second ascent.
• 1845 — Hermann Abich. On his fourth attempt, from the south-east by way of Sardarbulakh, Abich reached the eastern summit, which Bryce describes as only a few feet lower than the western one, and turned back in threatening weather without crossing to it.
• 1850 — General Chodzko (Iosif Khodzko). During the triangulation survey of Transcaucasia, Chodzko’s large party moved up slowly from 11 to 18 August and stayed on the summit for three days in a tent on the snow. Bryce’s footnote gives Chodzko’s height as 16,916 feet (about 5,156 m).
• 1856 — an English party that climbed from the Turkish side and, according to Bryce, believed itself to be first.

Abich, Chodzko and the 1856 party all used the south-eastern face; Parrot’s north-west line, Bryce noted, had rarely been followed since.

1876: James Bryce

Bryce set out from Aralykh on the morning of 11 September 1876 and left his bivouac at about one o’clock the next morning. When his companions stopped, he continued alone from about 13,600 feet (about 4,145 m). He reached the higher of two snow tops at 2.25 p.m. and judged the difference between the two tops at about thirty feet, less than Chodzko’s figure of 36 metres. He found no trace of the crosses that Parrot and Chodzko had set up. His account is in Transcaucasia and Ararat (third edition, London, 1878).

Heights recorded along the way

Nineteenth-century climbers measured the mountain with the instruments they carried, so their figures differ from today’s official value of 5,137 m for Greater Ağrı published by the Turkish tourism authority:

The two versions of Parrot’s figure show why a number should always be cited together with the edition it comes from. For the modern figures and how to read them, see elevation and measurement.

After 1876

The Ağrı Governorship’s mountain page records a winter ascent on 21 February 1970 by Dr. Bozkurt Ergör, a former president of the Turkish mountaineering federation. Its wording, ikinci kış tırmanışı, can be read either as “the second ascent, made in winter” or as “the second winter ascent”, so the claim should be quoted with that ambiguity. This reference has not yet checked twentieth-century ascents against primary records and does not list them.

Citing this history accurately

• Give both calendar dates for 1829, or state which one you use.
• Distinguish the expedition members named on the 1834 title page from the six people Parrot names on the summit.
• Keep the source’s spelling of a name and add a modern form in brackets if needed: Arguri also appears as Arghuri; the Governorship spells Parrot as “Frederik Von Parat”.
• Treat route descriptions from these accounts as history. They say nothing about which approaches are authorised today; for that, see permits and access and route names.

Sources

1. Friedrich Parrot, Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cooley. New York: Harper and Bros., 1846. Internet Archive. Read 14 September 2026.
2. Friedrich Parrot, Reise zum Ararat, Th. 1–2. Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1834. University of Tartu record. Checked 14 September 2026.
3. James Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 1878. Internet Archive. Read 14 September 2026.
4. Ağrı Valiliği, Ağrı Dağı (page dated 14.09.2020). Checked 14 September 2026.
5. GoTürkiye, Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) in Ağrı. Checked 14 September 2026.