Oops. I wrote this post in June 2016 but somehow forgot to publish it. Here it is, two years late…
Fatma’s been excited about climbing Geyiksivrisi for some time now. We had a date set a couple months ago, but something came up, and we cancelled. This week Barış and Tüğçe invited Fatma, Ferda, and me for dinner, and we made another plan for Geyiksivrisi. Tüğçe was super keen on camping so we decided to go up the night before and camp at Trebenna Antik Kenti. That ended up working really well.
We rented a car and picked up Tüğçe as she got off work Saturday afternoon. We were up at the Trebenna ruins in time to put our tents up and take a quick tour around the city before it got dark. There’s quite a nice view of the cliffs at Geyikbayırı from the outcrop where the ruined city sits. We had some good wine from Foça and a wonderful camp fire.
Not expecting a super long day, we didn’t get an early start in the morning. Fatma, Tüğçe, Ferda, and I started walking at 8:30am. Barış walked down to Akdamlar and got a dolmuş back to Antalya so he wouldn’t miss the Turkey-Croatia match (Turkey lost). Our progress on the mountain was a bit slower than I expected but not too bad. When we reached the ridge, Fatma decided to wait for us there.
Ferda, Tüğçe, and I continued to the summit at a reasonable pace, but what I didn’t expect was how slow Tüğçe would be on the descent. It took longer for us to go down than to go up. Much of the descent involves facing the rock and using hands and feet to descend safely. I went just below Tüğçe for hours and showed her where to put her feet. In the end we all made it down safely after being on the mountain for 12.5 hours, about double my rather optimistic estimate for the excursion. All of us were tired, of course, but Tüğçe was absolutely beat. She couldn’t keep her eyes open as we drove back to Antalya. However, she’s young, recovered quickly, went to work the next morning, and doesn’t regret for a minute our long day on the mountain.
Looks like a fun day!