A one day ride up to Saklıkent and Kar Çukuru Yaylası

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Bryan Keith

There are a number of one-day big elevation rides possible from Antalya.  A couple years ago in November I rode up to the summit of Sarı Çınar at 1800m.  That’s the summit visible from Antalya with the huge radio antenna at the top.  What I remember most from that day is how cold it was on the descent.  Even with wool socks and wool gloves, my hands and feet felt pretty frozen.  An even higher summit would be to ride to the observatory above Saklıkent.  I think that summit is above 2500m so, wow, that’d be a big one day ride.

I also know of three passes (not summits) above 2000m just above Antalya.  One is between Saklıkent and Söğütcuması.  Another is between Saklıkent and Kar Çukuru Yaylası, the yayla at the base of Tunç Dağı, the highest mountain visible from Antalya (and even higher than the ski resort).  The road between Saklıkent and İmecik climbs even higher than those two, but any loop over that pass seems too long to do as a day trip from Antalya (at least for me).

DSC05055 by bryandkeith on flickr
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A sea kayaking day from Olimpos to Adrasan

Posted on October 8, 2016 by Bryan Keith

If you compare the photos of my first sea kayaking tour in Turkey (three years ago) with the photos from the second tour (last weekend), the first thing you’ll notice is that this time we had red sea kayaks instead of yellow ones.  Wow; big, colorful plastic toys with the vegetation, rocks, and blue water makes for some nice photos.

Ahmet and Erhan by bryandkeith on flickr
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Köprülü Kanyon rafting and yet another Roman ruin

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Bryan Keith

Antalya’s ridiculously hot in the summer.  Anyone with any sense tries to escape this place in July and August, and yet that’s hardly true at all since summer is the high tourist season in Antalya.  Headaches, dehydration, and sunburn must be better than whatever the visitors are fleeing in Russia, Germany, and the UK.

Well, anyway, I try to escape Antalya’s summers.  Last year Ferda and I flew to Switzerland.  Just a couple days ago I bicycled from the heat at sea level up past the local ski area topping out at over 2000m where I found a cool breeze as I sat in the shade.  Those solutions are a bit extreme, I guess.  Most people just go to the beach.  Also many people from Antalya go rafting in Köprülü Kanyon.

DSCN9590 by bryandkeith on flickr

Ferda’s friend, Bilge, now lives and works in Germany and, like many others (!), chooses to come for his annual vacation in Antalya at the hottest time of the year.  When he visited, we escaped to Köprülü Canyon and camped for a couple nights.  The elevation isn’t so high there, but it’s surprisingly cool near the streams.  Actually the water in the side stream next to where we camped was so cold I could hardly stand to be in it for more than a couple minutes.  Wow, how refreshing coming from Antalya’s furnace.
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Snow climb on Tunç Dağı

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Bryan Keith

I think the activity I miss most from Colorado is the snow climbs.  The easy access to say, Skywalker Couloir on South Arapaho from Boulder, is pretty incredible.  And that’s one of many choices from Boulder.  The mountains around Antalya aren’t high enough to get a lot of snow, and the one with the quickest and easiest access is Tunç so we keep going back there.  These photos are from May, but it had been a particularly wet April so there’s more snow than one could usually expect in May.

The route we chose goes up through the large shady spot about 1/3 of the way in from the left of the photo. Above the shade we did an upward traverse to the right and then straight up to the ridge. by bryandkeith on flickr
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Matterhorn preps: Geyiksivrisi-Sarp Katran Ridge

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Bryan Keith

The ridge from Geyiksivrisi to Sarp Katran is another of the super fun scrambling ridges near Antalya.  Like the Sivri Dağı ridge traverse, this was also one of our training days for the Matterhorn.  We were even the same five people as on Sivri Dağı: Fahri, Hasan, Barış, Evren, and me.  Semra also joined Hasan, Barış, and me in Switzerland, but she lives in Rize and was doing her training in the Kaçkar Mountains.  The Kaçkars are certainly a better place than Antalya for this type of training, and it was apparent in Switzerland.  Semra seemed to handle the altitude and exposure better than the rest of us.

DSCN7638 by bryandkeith on flickr
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