Skiing road trip: Erzincan, Gümüşhane, Erzurum

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Bryan Keith

Seb decided to join me for this year’s (almost) annual ski trip to the Kaçkar Mountains. Because of covid (and the fact that he owns two cars?), Seb wanted to go by car and make a road trip out of it. I suppose our day trip up to Saklıkent was a test run for the car. I insisted on a heater (eastern Turkey in February!). Seb added one and did quite a bit of other work to prepare the old car (35 years old?) for a long journey from Antalya to (hopefully) the Kaçkar Mountains in NE Turkey. We almost made it to Manavgat (75km?) before Seb was removing the steering wheel to make a (minor?) repair.

The first car repair was before we even got to Manavgat by bryandkeith on flickr

From Manavgat it was up, up, up to the pass between Akseki and Seydişehir. I was stunned at just how slow Seb’s car is on the hills. Even on this main highway we sometimes had to use first gear and had fully loaded tanker trucks roaring passed us on the steepest parts. I was also stunned with how little snow there was at the pass at about 1800m.

We drove about 10 hours that first day, camping near the Aksaray-Nevşehir border, and then about 12 hours the following day to make it to Köklü, a village on the Kemah-Erzincan Merkezi border. In Sivas we started to see some snow, but clearly this isn’t enough for skiing:

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Mojave Desert bicycle tour: Ubehebe Crater to Las Vegas

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Bryan Keith

When we left off, I was making my way back to the pavement after a mini adventure from Panamint Springs to Racetrack Playa via Hunter Mountain.

Through the bottom of Death Valley
The downhill continued all the way to the pavement at Ubehebe Crater, but I had to push the bike a bit once I got to the lava/cinder area. The black sand of the roadbed was much finer and deeper than the surface of most of the descent. Getting to Ubehebe concluded what I had planned for this trip. The only thing left was to get to Las Vegas. Berdoo Canyon, Mengel Pass, and Hunter Mountain had all been hard excursions, but each took about a day less than I had (conservatively) expected. I had time to make it a pleasant, easy ride to Vegas. I hiked around Ubehebe Crater and relaxed in the wind at the parking lot. Only two cars plus a ranger came by during the ~3 hours I was there. Each car stopped, the occupants got out, took a couple photos, and were driving away less than 2 minutes later. Incredible! This place is the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t understand why anyone would drive so far and spend so little time. It turns out though that Ubehebe is only a 10 mile detour from the Scotty’s Castle road.

20071207091349-bryan by bryandkeith on flickr
Ubehebe Crater
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Mojave Desert bicycle tour: Death Valley backcountry

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Bryan Keith

continued from part one where we ended in unusually soggy Baker, California.

Death Valley National Park
Heading north of Baker the saddle that separates the Silurian Valley from Death Valley is only about a 50′ climb. From there I left the pavement and stopped at Saratoga Springs to see the incredible wetlands in the desert. I had planned on climbing the Ibex Dunes, but wind was blowing sand off the top of the dunes and everything was still a bit wet from the rain. The following day I reached the pavement, took it for 5 miles and then headed west up Warm Springs Canyon.

20071201152524-bryan by bryandkeith on flickr
Saratoga Springs
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Mojave Desert bicycle tour: Palm Springs to Baker

Posted on February 23, 2021 by Bryan Keith

Just like the Colorado Plateau bicycle tour that I posted on this blog a couple months ago, I rode this route over a decade ago, specifically Nov-Dec 2007, when I was living in Boulder. I had previously published the text and (unedited) photos, but good luck finding them (not that anyone finds this blog either :)). The text I’ll post unedited. I did a little work on the photos.

Let’s go:

Introduction
I (first) biked through Death Valley in October 1996. It was 109°F (43°C) at Furnace Creek. The area is beautiful, but it was way too hot at that time of year. I knew I wanted to come back on my bicycle when it was cooler. This year (2007) it worked out to take about 3 weeks after Thanksgiving. I ended up spending 18 days to cycle from Palm Springs to Las Vegas. I spent about half of that time in Death Valley NP. In Baker I met a group of cyclists on racing bikes with a support vehicle. They were cycling from Palm Springs to Las Vegas in 2 days. I saw a lot more desert than they did.

20071126114221-bryan by bryandkeith on flickr
looking down at Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley
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To the summit of Güllük Dağı, Termessos, again

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Bryan Keith

This is another of Semra’s, Bülent’s, and my covid day trips. It was on this excursion that we looked across at Darım Dağı and decided to climb it a week or so later. On this day, however, our goal was to get to the top of Güllük Dağı. I had been there before, but it was the first time for Semra and Bülent. What this meant was that I was supposed to sort of act as the guide, but finding the best way to get through all the bushes in the gully between the old Roman baths and the base of Güllük mountain isn’t really all that easy. We ended up with a bit of bushwhacking on the way there and found a cleaner route on the return — sort of what happened to us on Darım a week or so later. 🙂

Here’s the Termessos theater looking straight across at it. We’re moving away from the theater and are in the middle of the aforementioned bushwhacking section.

IMG_20201027_100536 by bryandkeith on flickr
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