Thomas Edison: I have not failed, I just found 10,000 ways that did not work.
That’s one of Edison’s most well-known quotes, and it is repeated in the Brent Baum documentary film called Finding Noah.
Anthropologists, religious scholars, biblical students, adventurers, archeologists, people of strong faith, and scientists of many stripes have been kicking around the question of Noah’s Ark for literally centuries.
Did God really warn and give Noah specific instructions about how to build an ark because he was going to flood the earth, and destroy every living being excepting those on this vessel.
As we hear in this terrific documentary, if God did that, then he did intervene and change the course of human kind. For a number of reasons, over the many years, it has been thought that the final resting place of the Ark was on Mt. Ararat in what is now Eastern Turkey. At one point this Mt was part of the Ottoman Empire, and was also a part of Armenia. Because of shifting political alliances and warfare, this Mountain now is a part of Turkey.
So a trek is organized. Funding, permits, equipment, and weather all come into play. On top of that there is only a specific time of the year when authorized expeditions can be allowed to set forth. The plan is that on Day One, they will hike to 3200 feet and stay in Base Camp. Actually base camp is not a formal or structural presence or location. It is mainly a piece of a plateau big enough and relatively flat enough to sustain about a dozen tents going up.
Day Two’s distance traveled will be up to 4200 feet. That is only about a thousand feet above Base Camp. But the grade is much steeper, so the going is harder, slower, and more grueling. They will stay at this level for two nights to acclimatize themselves to this altitude.
Don’t forget that while at this level, while you are doing more of mountaineering than rock climbing, you are dealing with the cold weather, the thinner oxygen, and you are carrying everything necessary to reach the summit on your own backs. And yes there is a deep gorge in the area as well as many deep crevasses. This is not Nepal, and Ararat goes only to 17,000+ feet. But there are no Sherpas here.
Eventually, the summit is reached – but that is just a part of the story. Now common sense dictates that if the Ark was to be found, the likelihood is that it would have been found long before. In today’s world, there are technologies available to assist in finding the remnants of the ark. Satellite imagery, sonar listening devices that can send out sound waves that can detect the differences in the returned signals that are bouncing off ice or bouncing off a different kind of material.
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