Hidden Mountains of Turkey – Kaçkar Dagi

 

Lake Deniz

Considering the fact that I travel around the world, specifically looking for peaks towering above 4000m, I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that Turkey has an amazing mountain range near the Black Sea, where the highest summit nearly touches 4000m and is referred by the locals as the Turkish Switzerland. This happened just the previous month where I was going to guide an international group to the top of Turkey, aka Mt Ararat, the oft claimed resting place of THE ARK. I have been to Turkey twice before, on both occasions merely leading groups to Ararat and taking a flight out. But this time I had several weeks to spare after Ararat and I pondered if there was any other mountain worth exploring and climbing in Turkey. Google came up promptly with Kaçkar Range. I found one blog by a solo guy and his pictures sealed the deal.

 

Flowers everywhere 

Post Ararat, my climbing partner and friend, Kiki from Greece and I headed for this little known elusive mountain range. Not much is known or found on line about this trail hence I am writing this post purely from a trekker’s climber’s point of view, more about info than my inner experience. All the facts given here are the latest as I was there just few weeks back.

 

So let’s start with the basic facts.

 

Our start point: Erzerum Bus Station

Our end point: Ayder Village bus station

Trekking start point: Yaylalar 1950m (road journey – Erzerum – Yusufeli – Yaylalar)

Trekking end point: Yukari Kavrun Yaylasi Village 2250m – on dirt road till Ayder

Trekking duration: 2 nights, 3 days (can be done in 1 night, 2 days)

Trekking Distance: 40km

Highest point crossed: Kaçkar Dagi Summit (the trail goes right through the summit) – 3937m

Trail Marking: red and blue lines/arrows. Generally well-marked, except few areas.

Difficulty: physical – difficult. You must have experience in navigation through wild mountains, scramble through steep unstable scree slopes and boulders, and good endurance.

Recommend to take a local guide unless you have adequate experience

Water is plentiful in most of the trail and drinkable without filtering

Locals are very friendly and helpful. You will meet local shepherds

Contact persons: At Yaylalar side – Ismayll +90 535 402 53 41

In Ayder – Hassan Palovit, who speaks fluent English and sports a thick beard. He is soft spoken, runs a guest house and also offers treks, etc. He can be contacted - +90 533 788 91 53. He is in Whatspp.

 

Day 1. We took the morning bus to Yusufeli from Erzerum bus station. Costs 130 TL per person. It’s a small bus and there are three per day – 9am / 12pm / 4pm. Reached Yusufeli at around 1.30pm. From here there’s a small minibus (dolmush in Turkish), which doesn’t really have any time. Someone from the bus station called the driver and he arrived around 2.30pm. His name was Ismail, and he is pretty much one man army in Yaylalar Village. He is the only link between this remote village and the outside world. He used to be a French teacher… go figure what that means and spoke half a dozen words in English as we did in Turkish, so overall we managed really well. The beautiful road wound along the river. Stopping at places Ismayll picked up bread and delivered to small settlements along the way plus delivered other stuff and posts, etc. We stopped twice for tea, both time complimentary from our driver. We even had a burst tyre and finally reached Yaylalar around 6pm. I think normally the time taken would be 2 hours. Cost us 120TL per person. We bought some provisions from Ismail’s brother’s store in front of his guesthouse and then camped by the river, which also has a toilet above. It’s free of charge.

 

Yaylalar Camping next to the river, there's a toilet

Yaylalar Village

The only grocery store in Yaylalar, run by Ismayll's brother

Day 2. We started off at around 11am, following the well-marked road until Olgunlar Yaylasi. If you have a car you can go till here and park it, but then you would have to return this way. Else take a village taxi till there. No idea what that would cost, but I am sure Ismayll would arrange something. From Olgunlar we crossed the stream to its true right bank across a bridge and simply followed a wide well used path heading directly towards the towering peaks. The path goes up gradually so it’s an easy walk. The beauty was simply awe inspiring, especially after the dry and dusty Ararat. We soaked into the green. Plenty of water all along the trail. There were few minor stream crossings. After around 4 hours we reached the Dilberduzu Base Camp area that is located upon a huge flat patch with water point at around 2860m. This base camp is used by those who go to the summit and return to Yaylalar. There are few local agencies who has set up tents and kitchen, etc there. We crossed them and continued up. In another hour or so we reached the camping area of Lake Deniz at around 3400m. The lake is spectacular and had sizeable amount of snow deposit around. The sky was overcast and we could see intermittently the tip of Kaçkar Dagi. We set up camp and cooked and then slept under a starry sky.

 

Total distance covered from Yaylalar camping to Deniz Lake camping – 14km. Time taken 6 hours. Altitude gain – 1500m

Dirt road to Olgunlar Yalasi

Olgunlar Village, many dilapidated houses

 

Olgunlar bridge, crossing to true right bank

Trail after Olgunlar

Dilberduzu Base Camp 2860m 

Lake Deniz 3400m

Lake Deniz Camp

Day 3. We took off around 8.30am following the red markings. The trail first climbs steeply on a narrow ledge and then goes down to a flatter pasture on the other side. I realized that there was a lower trail too and there were few very nice camping spots here. This place is a better place to camp. From here the trail marking is almost nonexistent and a good sense of navigation is necessary. There are only stone cairns around and very faded markings, if at all. But the cairns are numerous and scattered all around. So you must head straight up for an obvious col right in front with the lake exactly behind you. Do not go to the trails right or left even if they look well trodden and obvious. Stay in the centre and head for the depression in the ridge right up and ahead. From the col the trail goes down steeply to the other side through couple of snow fields and then starts climbing on a central moraine field. Again right in the middle of it, follow the cairns in the centre and not the ones on the sides. You will constantly see Kackar Dagi summit to your right at around 2 O’ clock. There’s no real trail here. Use your judgement to follow a diagonal upward path through the boulders aiming for the top of the only waterfall to your right almost in line with the summit. This waterfall will be crossed through a slippery section and on the other side the trail again becomes obvious. Follow the zig zag path all the way to the top of the ridge and you will reach the summit with a summit log box and pole. This section though only 3km from Lake Deniz, takes quite some time with many ups and downs, twists and turns, keeping it interesting. The views are absolutely mind blowing. We took around 2 hours to reach the top. Little did we know that our main challenge lay on the other side. 

Crossing across the slippery waterfall patch

Summit ridge

Kackar Summit 3937m

After a brief rest we started going down the other side following red arrow marks. The northern side descent is very well marked with big red and some blue arrows but it was complete white out with a raging gale. We could barely see anything and the path is not only scree but really steep and we  had to be very careful as we slipped and slid and at times reverse climbed down slippery snow slopes and tottering boulders. It took us nearly 2 hours to reach the col at 3500m and only a distance of under a km. We had heavy backpacks and the weather condition was anything but ideal, so we were really slow and careful. At the col we found a huge slope of snow and ice, circumventing it from the right we slid through deep black shingles and rocks and the next hour and half was sheer hell through bigger and deeper scree fields, steeply angled and several snow fields. It was certainly taxing on my damaged knees. From the col till we came out of the scree slopes there was hardly any marking anywhere. But then there’s only one obvious exit from the valley so it is not really necessary. After the scree field, the slope eased out a bit as it turns to the right and the markings are visible again. Soon we came across a chirping stream where we drank to our fill and rested our shoulders. Again shrouded in complete mist, I had to rely mostly on my sense of direction and we walked down. Everything was completely wet and soon our boots were thoroughly soggy. The grass and ground were dripping water. Rarely had I seen such humidity at such altitudes. Though we could have reached, we decided to camp somewhere before the Kavrun Village. But the fog made it nigh impossible to locate a flat patch. Finally we found a sort of patch barely room enough for our tent. Water point was only ten minutes’ walk away so it seemed as fine a location as any. The invisible river to our left kept roaring through the night.

 

Total distance covered from Deniz Lake camping to camping before Kavrun Village – 9.5km. Time taken – 8 hrs.

 

Going down towards Ayder from the summit

Following the red arrows

View on the other side from below the col

Scree slopes 

The first water point after getting down from the col

River corssing

Camping before Kavrun village

Day 4. The morning was clear but soon the mist rose up from the valley, giving us a brief glimpse of the cluster of houses that was Yukari Kavrun Yaylasi Village. We could not dry our tent or our shoes as there wasn’t any sun. In about 20 minutes we came to the unpaved road and followed it to the village. We could have taken a dolmush but the wait would have been long as they don’t have any time table, so we decided to walk all the way down to Ayder Village 12 km away. It took us 4 hrs of steady walk, on the unpaved twisted road to get to Ayder. And we camped in the forest just above the soccer field. At Ayder there is a camping ground for 100TL per person per night, but it is quite uneven and not really well managed.

 

Next day we actually returned to Kavrun Village with a Dolmush and camped another night above the village and then headed to Trabzon, via Ayder, Pazar and Rize. Taking local buses from one point to another.

 

Looking back at Kackar summit from Kavrun side

Yukar Kavrun Village

Dirt road to Ayder 

Ayder village entrance

If you wish to get to Kackar from the Black Sea side then the best thing would be to fly from Istanbul to Pazar-Rize airport and a local bus to Ayder and onwards to Yukari Kavrun. After this trip I realized that the entire Kackar Range of mountain lies in a kind of NE – SW axis with many peaks above 3000m and are mostly jagged and truly wild. There are few trails, with marking. The best season, as one local guide told us, would be August and September and perhaps till mid-October. The area is dotted with alpine lakes of various sizes and one guy estimated them to be nearly a hundred in number. The entire range deserves a much deeper and rigorous exploration.

 

Kaçkar Range is now my only objective in my next trip to Turkey.

Note: Though Kackar mountains is seldom visited even by local tourist, Ayder Village is a popular destination for tourists and it was such a shock to my system to see so many people and all the trappings of tourism after such a remote and wild mountain that I ran back into the mountain. 

Few other notable peaks in the range are - Altiparmak Dagi (3492m), Kemerli (3562m),Geztepe (3760m), Vercenik Dagi (3711m) which according to a local hiker is the most challenging climb in the region

For navigation we used maps.me app in the phone and it worked perfectly well offline.