Cambridge North Persian 1956

This party of six, comprising four climbers and two naturalists, travelled overland to Tehran from where they set out for the Elburz mountains, establishing a basecamp near Hazar Chal. Here they made ascents of Alam Kuh by both its east and west ridges, ascents of Gardune Kuh, including the likely first ascent of the north-east gully and a traverse of the south-east ridge of Siah Sang Kuh. While the naturalists moved on to the Hazar Cham Pass to conduct a survey of flora and fauna, the climbers relocated camp to a less well-travlled glacier to the north-west. Here they made an ascent of Takht-i-Suleiman and what they believed to be the first traverse of the Haft Khan Ridge. (This has actually been achieved a short while earlier by a Franco-Iranian expedition. They subsequently explored an area to the north-west of Demavend which had been recommended to them by the Irania Mountaineering Federation. However, they found little of interest from a mountaineering perspective and consoled themselves with an ascent of Demavend to end the expedition.