Santa Rosa-based Climbers for Peace marks successful expedition to Iran

Fred Ptucha’s 75-year-old legs were strong enough to get him to the top of Iran’s Mount Damavand two weeks ago. Breathing the increasingly thin air on the way up the tallest volcano in Asia was another matter.

“The problem was getting enough oxygen in my lungs,” said Ptucha, a retired Santa Rosa financial planner who organized the expedition to a land few Americans visit these days and a trek up the graceful snow-capped peak, a storied presence in ancient Persian mythology.

At 16,000 feet, still a half-mile from the summit, the air holds 45 percent as much oxygen as it does at sea level.

“It just doesn’t work so well for the body,” Ptucha said.

Four of the six men in the Climbers for Peace group made it to Damavand’s 18,605-foot summit on July 6, a bright, sunny day with a temperature of 45 degrees.

They were able to enjoy the spectacular vista, including smog-shrouded Tehran about 40 miles away, but only for 15 ?minutes before the wind shifted, blanketing the summit in a cloud of rotten-egg smelling sulfurous gas belched from the innards of Damavand, a “potentially active” volcano.

On their way down, the climbers came upon an Iranian shepherd and his dog tending a flock of about 150 sheep.

“You felt like you were going back to biblical times,” said Ptucha, a Vietnam War veteran who co-founded Climbers for Peace in 1997.

Scaling Damavand was the group’s 11th expedition, but the mountaineering is actually a means to the group’s end, called “citizen diplomacy,” the creation of friendships with people of foreign nations.

Two other Sonoma County men missed the mountaintop: Xavier Polk, 65, of Santa Rosa got altitude sickness at 16,000 feet and had to turn back, while Dave Wahlstrom, 71, of Kenwood fell ill on the first day of acclimatization climbs and returned to Tehran.

Three men from Salt Lake City - David Roskelly and Kevin and Greg Paul - made the seven-hour, 7-mile hike to the top with Ptucha and their companions from the Iranian Mountaineering Federation.

Once reunited at normal ground level, the three Sonoma County men embarked on a week of sightseeing in Tehran and five other cities around Iran, which sees few American tourists. The U.S. State Department advises citizens to avoid Iran, one of the seven nations included in President Donald Trump’s travel ban, out of concern for their “arbitrary arrest and detention.”

The climbers never came upon any other Americans. The Iranian mountaineers, who issued their own formal invitation to the Climbers for Peace, told the group that only 100 visas had been granted to Americans this year.

The American climbers’ travels went smoothly. They marveled at mosques capped by ornately tiled domes, restaurants decorated with wood paneling and ornate chandeliers and the warm welcome of the Iranian people, including invitations to join picnics in parks.

Ptucha said it was the best reception he’s ever experienced in his travels through Asia and Europe.

“People would come up to us all the time in the streets, always wanting to talk and take selfies with us,” he said. “We were a rare commodity.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.