A long day on Geyiksivrisi

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Bryan Keith

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.

Geyiksivrisi by bryandkeith on flickr

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.
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İshak Paşa Sarayı in Doğubayazit

Posted on June 18, 2018 by Bryan Keith

If you’re passing through Doğubayazit, İshak Paşa Sarayı really is a must stop.  I wrote a very little about it once before when Sage and I bicycled through this region about six years ago.  The photos I’m posting here today are from my second visit when the excuse to come to Doğubayazit was to climb Mt. Ararat.

İshak Paşa Sarayı is the palace on the hill above Doğubayazit.  Here’s what it looks like from above and below:

DSCN9817 by bryandkeith on flickr
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Güver Uçurumu Canyon descent with Onur and Bekir

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Bryan Keith

I’ve written before about bicycling around the rim of Güver Uçurumu, and my last post was about trad climbing at Kapuz Boğazı at the bottom of the Güver Uçurumu.  On this trip we decided to descend Güver Uçurumu Canyon directly.  It’d be possible and fun to follow the canyon all the way to Kapuz Boğazı, but you really need a dedicated driver to do that feasibly.  There’s no trail, and the road goes way around so even a bicycle shuttle would be rather inconvenient.

There were three of us this day, and none of us had done this route before.  Bekir and I had descended Ahmetler Canyon together.  We expected Güver Uçurumu to be much, much easier than that.  Well, it was easier than Ahmetler, but the Güver Uçurumu descent was more challenging and took longer than we expected.

The troubles started just finding the start of the route.  We ended up parking the car at Yukarı Karaman Mezarlığı which worked out fine.  However, I’m pretty sure there are better (closer) places to leave the car.  We weren’t far from the start of the route, but we walked quite a bit up on the rim of the canyon at the end of the trip to get back to the car.  As we started walking down the canyon, we expected to see the initial descent on our right.  Indeed it was, but even having been there before and keeping an eye out for the start, we managed to walk right past it!

We did this August, and there was no water flowing into the initial descent.  It’d be fun to do the route again when the start would be rappelling 50m down next to a waterfall.  We found the rappel bolts and were glad to have an extra 10m of cord to safely reach those bolts.  They’re well on the edge of the cliff.  I tied two 50m ropes together, threw one down, and was surprised that it didn’t hit the water in the pool at the bottom.  I knotted the end of the second rope and then pulled the first rope back up to put a knot in that end as well.  “Wasn’t the rappel supposed to be 50m?” we wondered.

Down I went, and sure enough with rope stretch 50m ropes are definitely long enough.

DSC06186 by bryandkeith on flickr

We started by rappelling into this pool:
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Trad climbing at Kapuz Boğazı

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Bryan Keith

Kapuz Boğazı is the name given to the area where the Güver Uçurumu Canyon widens out after the water is constricted in a narrow gorge.  You can reach from below easily by road via Aşağı Karaman Köyü.  I’ve come both by car and by bicycle.  The only way I know of to get there from the top would be floating in the stream.  There’s a small dam right at the mouth of the canyon so there’s not much current at the end of that trip.  The water’s quite cold even in August.

According to the climbing guidebook (which calls this area Kapuzbaşı), there are 11 trad routes in the area shown in this photo:

The thing to do here is to climb those two pinnacles and the crack that's visible behind and just to the left of the pinnacle on the right. by bryandkeith on flickr

The routes are on the two pinnacles and in the crack that’s (barely) visible behind and to the left of the pinnacle on the right.  Seb and I started with a 70m VI+ route to get to the top of the pinnacle on the right.  Here’s Seb making his way up to the summit:
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Close to heaven in Çıralı?

Posted on May 19, 2018 by Bryan Keith

Ferda used to love going to Olimpos.  She took me a number of times in the first year we were together.  But that was before she had spent any time in Çıralı.  It was two years ago when Ferda and I were planning on going to Olimpos for a week for swimming and climbing.  Fatma wanted to join us for the first couple days, but she asked that we go to Çıralı instead.  After she left, we could easily walk to Olimpos and spend the rest of our week there.  Sure, we said, sounds reasonable.

Well, we found nice camping in the orange orchard at Sahil Pansiyon in Çıralı and ended up spending 10 days there.  We’ve been back at least twice since then (no more Olimpos for us!), and certainly I’m ready to go again.

DSCN1441 by bryandkeith on flickr

You go climbing in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, and have a bbq in the evening.  There’s a market across the street from the camping and a few shops and restaurants a five-minute walk away in the center of the village if you need anything more, like, say, a one-meter long pide.
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