In these photos, taken during the expedition preceeding the one of Schranz, you can see a dark stain with a geometrical shape near the glacier "Parrot".

As you can see in this photo, there's a big girder made of ancient wood, that comes out of a heap of snow. According to Angelo Palego, this girder is located 200 meters away from the portion of the Noah's Ark on which he walked in July 1989. This fragment, located at 4300 meters of altitude, was 100 meters long, 26 meters wide and 15 meters high and it was found thanks to the descriptions contained in the Bible, as explained in the second book written by Palego and titled "Come ho trovato l'Arca di Noè" ("The way I found Noah's Ark").

It wasn't possible to collect a sample of the wood, because a big crevasse separated Schranz (in solitary climb) from the girder. The movie was realized in December, 2nd 2002, at a distance of about 5-6 meters from the object. To see the movie, click here (1,67Mb). If you have problems of visualization, you have to install the DivX codec, freely downloadable from the site www.divx.com.

The girder comes out from the glacier of Mount Ararat, at an altitude of 4200 meters. It's visible to the naked eye and the Alpine guide Claudio Schranz of Macugnaga has no more doubts: it's a piece of the Noah's Ark. He saw and photographed it at a distance of five meters. It's the morning of December, 2nd, Schranz is an Alpinist and he's 51 years old, he has hundredths of expeditions in all the world to his credits. But that wood that comes out for about seventy centimeters is something strange and unusual.

WHAT DID YOU FEEL IN THAT MOMENT? 
"An undescribable emotion, something I never felt inside me, notwithstanding the great number of expeditions in which I took part during over thirty years of my life, from Nepal to Himalaya, to Mexico, to the Andes and to the Rocky Mountains". 

BUT HOW CAN YOU BE SURE THAT WOOD REALLY BELONGS TO THE NOAH'S ARK AND NOT TO ANOTHER FIND?
"At those altitudes human settlements don't exist: a board of those dimensions, or rather a girder, can only be transported to finish there. Studies on the Noah's Ark were made by Angelo Palego, of Trecate, in the province of Novara, who followed this dream for fifteen years and came up here many times, he also walked on the glacier which preserves a great fragment of this ship. After he accomplished the eighteenth expedition, he asked me to try to reach the place indicated by him because he glimpsed something strange. His coordinates were exact, he led accurate researches referring to the indication present in the Bible. All seems to correspond. The Ark, after the Deluge, would have settled on Ararat and then it would have broken into two parts in consequence of an earthquake. The fragment I saw could be a girder belonging to the base of the ship. I'm quite sure about this, indeed I feel able to completely confirm the theory of Palego". 

THE ARK APPEARS AFTER 4371 YEARS AND IT'S AN EXTRAORDINARY SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. OTHER PEOPLE BEFORE YOU BROUGHT PROOFS OF ITS EXISTENCE, BEGINNING WITH THE FRENCH NAVARRA. THEN THERE WERE THE SURVEYS OF AMERICAN SATELLITES AND EVEN MESSNER WANTED TO CLIMB UP THERE. BUT YOU BRING SOMETHING NEW. WERE YOU ALONE IN THAT MOMENT? 
"Let's proceed step by step and go over the adventure again. I received a phone call by Palego, famous for his expeditions (do you remember when he was taken prisoner by Kurdish guerrilleros of Ocalan and freed thanks to the intervention of the Italian government?) and I left for Turkey. I was interested in that mountain and also in the target. Before starting the ascent I trusted to two local alpinists, I well knew that the season was very advanced and that I would find difficulties and a lot of snow. They accompanied me to a certain point, with two donkeys. We camped, but the weather was very bad and at a certain moment animals sank into the snow to the back. My fellows decided to go downhill and I remained alone, but I could not give up. I went on among many difficulties, even an avalanche ran over me and I fell in crevasses for three times. I was up there other times alone, but not during the winter season. It was hard, but in the end I did it". 

WHEN DID YOU REALIZE THAT YOU REALLY REACHED THE EXACT LOCATION?
"I continued the march at midnight and I came to that place at dawn of December, 2nd. From the top, with binoculars, I could clearly distinguish under the Parrot glacier the shape of a dark strip that came out from the surface for about a meter. I winced, then I got as closer as I could, at a distance of about five-six meters. I couldn't get closer, because I was afraid of falling into a crevasse. But it was enough to see with naked eye that that woody blackened structure (maybe it was soaked in pitch) consisted in a girder, with its edges and a thickness of about 30 centimeters. I took the telecamera from the knapsack and I filmed it in the deepest silence. The movie lasts an hour and it's visible on the web site  www.noahsark.it". 

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE?
"The girder is 200 meters away from the point in which Palego identified the profile of a part of the Ark some years ago, under the ice. Well, I'll return up there next summer and I'll try to partially extract that fragment, but I need the collaboration of Turkish authorities. Anyway I'll bring a piece, at least a little bit, to Italy".