I had done this route once before, about five years ago. It really is a super fun day. This time I was taking Seb and Philipp up Geyiksivrisi for their first time. What a bonus for their first day to also get to continue along the ridge to Sarp Katran!
This is an especially good route if you’re able to leave a car at the end of the route below the summit of Sarp Katran so you don’t have to walk all the way back to the start point at Elmin Mahallesi. That final section is all downhill with no trail through a fair bit of rocky terrain. It takes a couple hours and really isn’t very fun.
Seb and I drove up the evening before, left his car at the base of Sarp Katran, above Kozağacı, as I just described, and bicycled back to his house.
Philipp picked up us at Seb’s house in Çakırlar the following morning, and we drove up in Philipp’s car to Elmin Mahallesi, the regular start point for Geyiksivrisi.
We took three hours to reach the summit of Geyiksivrisi, a reasonable (not fast) pace.
Here we are celebrating with a little lunch on the Geyiksivrisi summit.
From there we started moving pretty slowly, enjoying the ridge I guess you could say, and ended up taking almost 10 hours to complete the route (even with the car shuttle!).
And finally the Sarp Katran summit, looking back at the ridge we had just spent about five hours traversing:
That’s a seriously fun hike. I’m looking forward to doing it again.
Beautiful scenery!