April 19, 2004 |
The trail is part of the Lycian Way — Turkey’s first long-distance walking trail, which even has its own guide book. Unfortunately, we’ve managed to leave this behind at home.
Standing regally above the beach, Mt Olympos is one of the main reasons we’ve come to Çirali, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Called Tahtali Dag in Turkish, its snow-capped peak rises from the sea to a height of 2366m. And we intend to conquer it.
We could start the hike from Çirali village, but this would add a return trip of about 20km to the day. So instead we ask Pinar from the pension we’re staying at to drop us off at Beycik, a village perched some 900m above the sea. We leave too early for breakfast at the pension, but she packs us sandwiches to eat on the way.
The Lycian Way
From Beycik, the well-marked track winds up through the pine forest. The trail is part of the Lycian Way — a 509km walk along the Lycian coast from Fethiye to Antalya. It’s Turkey’s first long-distance walking trail, and even has its own guide book. Unfortunately, we’ve managed to leave this behind. Hopefully the markings will continue!
After 45 minutes or so we emerge from the forest into a small meadow made yellow with spring flowers. Above us to the right looms an imposing cliff, its shadow stretching far down the mountainside. The path takes us to the left, back into the forest. Lined with juniper, wild sage, blue and white daisies, and hot pink wild cyclamen, it zig-zags ever more steeply upwards. It’s not long before we cross the first snowdrift, and not long after that before the ground is completely covered in snow.
This makes following the path more tricky, but it’s clear we must keep heading upwards to Tahtali saddle. Once there we stop for a breather, and admire a fine view of the Olympos Bey Mountains. There’s also a fine view of where we must go: straight up a steep scree slope which hides the summit.
Scree and snow to the summit
We scramble up the slope, which is thankfully marked with stone cairns the entire way. It’s strenuous work, but we somehow manage to climb higher than we slide back. After an hour we reach the final stage — a huge snow-filled basin that we must simultaneously traverse and climb to reach the top.
Wary of the cornice along the top of the ridge, and with no sign of the track thanks to the snow, we choose to traverse the basin lower down. It’s slow going. We have to stamp down each footstep to make sure the snow is stable and to prevent ourselves from sliding to the bottom, and there’s a number of cracks in the snow that we test before crossing. But an hour or so later we reach the top without mishap.
The view is fantastic. We can see east and west along the coast, including down to Çirali far below. Inland is a carpet of forest, crowned by the rocky snow-covered peaks of the Olympos Bey Mountains.
We can also see the sheer cliff on the other side of the cornice we traversed beneath, and are very happy we kept well away. In fact, cliffs drop away from the summit on all sides, except for the basin we climbed, and even that’s pretty steep. Mt Olympos is clearly not a mountain to tackle in bad weather.
Back down to the beach
The way down is much quicker. We trace our path back along the basin, and then run down a snowdrift beside the scree slope to Tahtali saddle. After that it’s an easy walk back to Beycik.
Waiting to be picked up, we drink coffee in a small café and chat to Ahmet, a local who lived in Germany for 20 years before returning to Turkey. He’s impressed we made the hike, but also bemoans the tourists who come on big tour buses just to take a picture of Mount Olympos.
“They do nothing for the village,” he says. “They don’t buy anything, they don’t talk to anyone, they learn nothing about the area.”
Back in Çirali, we thankfully take off our hiking boots and don our swimmers. Floating in the Mediterranean once more, we watch Mt Olympos turn pink in the sunset, and lazily contemplate the next few days. But for now we’re content to ease our weary legs and feet in the water, and think no further ahead than where to have dinner.
I originally wrote this for WWF.