From sea level to Medetsiz (3524m) (and Tarsus)

It’s one thing to drive to a trailhead and walk up a mountain.  It’s quite another thing, and much more aesthetically pleasing in my opinion, to make your way under your own power to the trailhead and then continue to the summit.  Maybe Göran Kropp is the only one who has really climbed Mt. Everest?  Actually I’m sure that’s not true as there must be numerous Sherpa who have walked from their villages to the summit.

From my house in Boulder I collected a number of bike-then-hike summits: Longs Peak (with Craig), Mt. Evans (with Kurt), North and South Arapaho (with Karl), Bear Peak (with Kevin), Apache, Mt. Meeker, a number of times up Audubon, and others I’m certainly forgetting.  Once for Audubon I tried to do it fairly quickly and was pleased enough with my time that I posted it on one of the record sites that was up then.  I can’t find the site now, and my personal notes aren’t readily accessible, but I can assure you it was well off what the real athletes do.

From Antalya the only ones I can think of are Sarı Çınar and Geyiksivrisi.  For the latter I’m not too embarrassed to say it took 9.5 hours from my house in Kaleiçi to the summit and back.  Speaking of speed Héctor Ponce de León’s sub 24 hour time from the Gulf of Mexico to the summit of Orizaba is definitely something to be proud of.  Wow, while researching this post, I learned that an Italian bested Héctor’s time seven years ago, but the Mexican has come back and done it again in just over 13 hours!

Bagging summits on a bicycle tour is definitely a different style, perhaps the “Nice Michel” style, I can say?  Years ago, when warmshowers was a paper list mailed annually from Balboa Island, I took advantage of a similar French list, CAC (Cyclo Accueil Cyclo), to find hosts.  Michel and his wonderful family hosted us in their house near Nice.  I still remember Michel describing his US bicycle tour.  He flew to San Francisco, pedaled away from the airport, and along the way ended up on the summit of Mt. Whitney.  Wow, “that really counts!”, I’ve always thought.

Over the years I’ve been up some peaks in that style.  Two come to mind: Kaçkar from Erzurum and Doi Inthanon from Bangkok.  This week it was Medetsiz, the highest point in the Bolkar Mountains.  42 days from my house in Antalya to the top of Medetsiz certainly doesn’t set any speed records.  However, less than 48 hours before I was on the summit, I dropped into a canyon and crossed a river at about 500m.

I wish I had taken a selfie at the bottom.  I was covered in sweat in shorts and a t-shirt!

With the ups and downs I think it was about 3700m climbing in 48 hours which, well, counts for something, I guess.

I stopped here to rest and cool down on the way down:

A day later (via dolmuş from Gülek) I was back in Tarsus for yet another dentist appointment.  Since I can now say fairly confidently that I won’t be back in Tarsus any time soon, I’ll include some photos of my three recent Tarsus visits here.

In spite of Tarsus’ long history, the city really isn’t that interesting to visit.  I felt the same way after spending about three days in Tarsus three years ago.

There’s a small area of somewhat neglected old houses,

the Kubat Paşa Medresesi,

the Ulu Camii with its nice courtyard and a clock tower instead of one of the minarets (with Arabic numerals on the face of the clock!),

Cleopatra’s Gate (with the obligatory “Love Tarsus” letters; these seem to be everywhere now!),

but the highlight for me was, I think, Tarsus’ famous humus and fındık lahmacun (much better than what I complained about in Çamlıyayla).