Dar-Alages

Dar-Alages is a cluster of six cinder cones south of Lake Sevan, built from andesite rock with a base sitting around 1,500 meters and its highest points named Smbatassar and Vaiyots-sar. The last eruption here is placed at roughly 2000 BC.

Fissures from Vaiyots-sar once sent lava down toward Vayk, damming the Arpa river and pushing another 6 km down the valley. The Smbatassar cones produced two separate flows, 11 km and 17 km long, both lying over river terraces from the Pleistocene near the Yeghegis river — a layering that geologists use to date the eruptions to the Holocene, since no soil has formed on top of the flows.

Some local accounts tie the volcano to the destruction of the towns of Yeghegis and Moz in 735 AD, though the link is legend rather than record.

Dar-Alages sits in Vayots Dzor region, about 120 km east-southeast of Yerevan as the crow flies, south of Lake Sevan.