Some Climbs In Turkey
by G. B. Spenceley
Next to Lapland, and I had already been there, Turkey seemed the nearest spot where a holiday would have something of the flavour of an expedition. There are mountains still un-climbed in Turkey and I calculated that with a full car we could be at their foot at a travel cost of £20 per head. We may not, in fact, have made first ascents but there was quite enough remoteness, strange atmosphere and lack of knowledge to satisfy any budding explorer/mountaineer; and the estimate of costs was not far out.
I wanted to go to Turkey anyway for more than mountains. All that I had heard and read about the country indicated its interest and diversity and my intention was to devote two or three summers to its study, to travel and photograph widely and if possible to climb. It was a chance meeting with Pat and Peter Shorter that made this last a reality. They were eager to join me and besides tremendous enthusiasm for climbing, they shared between them a useful range of other skills. Pat had much medical and surgical knowledge, Peter knew all about cars and they were both superb cooks who could effortlessly rustle up the most exquisite and exotic dishes. Washing up was the only culinary task I was ever permitted.
Anatolia is ringed with mountains but at only five places do they thrust themselves up to a height sufficient to bear snow in summer and offer a real challenge to the mountaineer. Highest of all and giving a view over three countries is Noah’s mountain, Mount Ararat, rising in solitary splendour from the heart of old Armenia to over 17,000 ft. It is an ice-capped cone of lava and only good lungs and limbs are needed for its ascent so that it has been climbed more often by athletic intellectuals than by skilled alpinists. South of Ararat, beyond Lake Van, in that wedge of Turkey which separates the frontiers of Iraq and Iran, are the rugged mountains of the Hakkari, the last stronghold in Turkey of the semi-feudal Kurds. Freya Stark had travelled there and more recently Tom Weir, but from 1960 this had become a totally restricted area, for it was Government policy to insulate these unassimilated and troublesome people from contact with the foreigner. Officially, the ban has now been lifted but, as for anywhere else east of the Euphrates, permission may still be withheld.
North of Ararat, following the coastline of the Black Sea, are the Pontic Alps, crowned at their eastern end by the rocky peaks of the Kackar group. But here, where the climber may look into Soviet Russia—and the Caucasus—across Turkey’s most vital military frontier, again the foreigner was not encouraged. In 1964 Robin Fedden led the first British party to these mountains but they were restricted to the northern watershed. It seemed that we could go to none of the best mountain ranges in Turkey. There was Erciyas Dag of course, the ancient Mount Argaeus which makes a noble background to the old Cappadocian town of Kayseri; one could travel there unhindered, but like Ararat it is only an isolated volcanic cone.
All that was left for us was the Ala Dag, a 25 mile range of mountains lying between Erciyas and the Cilician Gates; these were certainly high enough, reaching 13,000 feet in places, reasonably accessible and still satisfyingly little known. They were not quite so enticing as the Hakkari perhaps but they seemed the best choice for our expedition. Expedition is a word I should hardly use; if I do so it is only because it adds flavour to a journey that might otherwise suffer the indignity of being called a trip. After all we had no pretensions to anything more serious than climbing where few had been before.
The first of the few were Germans and Austrians who between the wars made three visits (D.u O.A.V. Zeitschrift, 1934 : 1939); they climbed Demirkazik, 13,000 feet, the highest peak, and some 30 others. Then came the British, wartime residents in Turkey, notably E. H. Peck and R. A. Hodgkin, who again climbed Demirkazik, this time by a couloir on its west face (A.J. 268:270). More recently S. E. P. Nowill, an English business man living in Istanbul, to whom we were much indebted for information, had made three visits and more ascents; a few weeks before our arrival an expedition from Northern Ireland had been in the area carrying out a detailed survey. We had to admit there had been quite a few visitors before us and it is possible that now the mountains still unclimbed are to the south east around Torasan Dag.
But Turkish mountains were to be only part of our plan and purpose for there was much else to interest and delay us on the 7,000 mile round journey upon which in the middle of July 1964 we set out. With determination and stamina one can motor to Istanbul in five days but in Austria we took time off for a training exercise on the Gross Venediger and again we were nearly tempted to delay our progress when, crossing into Yugoslavia by the Wurtzen Pass, we saw before us the magnificent grey limestone peaks of the Julian Alps. Through Bulgaria we lingered not at all, except to taste its food and wine, but hurried on, rattling along cobbled roads all through the night, halted once by armed soldiers, muddled by endless form filling at the frontier, to stretch out exhausted on Thra-cian sand for a few hours’ sleep before rushing on, now on earth roads in a cloud of dust, to our first swim in the Marmara Sea. It had taken us nine days to reach Turkey.
However dedicated, no mountaineer should hurry without pause through Istanbul and to stop there for a few days was part of our plan. That in the congested and chaotic turmoil of traffic in that city we survived those days without damage to the car can only be accounted for by brilliant driving—our driving that is—or was it just good luck? But we were even more alarmed on the busy Ankara road where hundreds of tottering, disintegrating buses compete with each other to offer the fastest inter-city schedule. Turkish drivers seem to believe they have some divine right of way and anyway whatever happens is the will of Allah. The many shattered wrecks on the side of the road tell their own story.
From Ankara we drove south-east by the great salt lake of Tuz Golu. From its southern shores we turned off along dusty rugged tracks to follow in the footsteps of a certain wandering French scholar who some time in the late 18th century accidentally rediscovered one of the greatest wonders of Asia.
Here, where the land falls away from the plateau to a wide valley below, one is suddenly transported into some lunar landscape of fabulous shapes. Where once in some prehistoric upheaval a layer of volcanic debris was scattered, eroding forces have carved from the soft volcanic tufa an infinite variety of cones, columns and towers, gigantic in size, grotesque in shape. This is Goreme where man and nature have
combined to create the wholly fantastic, for in this volcanic landscape, in a setting so favourable to ascetism and mysticism, dwelt hermits and monks aspiring to ‘a better world’. Over an area of 48 square miles hundreds of these rock spires and valley slopes have been hollowed out to form cells, chapels, churches and monasteries. Almost unrecorded by history, over a period extending from St. Paul’s converts to the early 15th century, dwelt hermits and communities of early Christians, refugees seeking solitude and security from Roman, Iconoclast, Arab, Turkish or Mongol threat. And here hidden in their hewn out homes is a lost province of Byzantine art, for their walls and ceilings contain the world’s most complete collection of Christian frescoes. In such a wonderland no apology is needed for a further delay and we ourselves happily became troglodytes, taking up residence in a convenient cave — the coolest camp we were ever to enjoy.
But mountains came in mind at last and we pushed on, going south-east again, two days journey over the arid plateau. Near Nigde we turned off to the village of Camardi on the outskirts of which, in a primitive mud and wattle hut, we found Ibrahim Saffak—poor and ragged, simple and illiterate but one of Nature’s greatest gentlemen. His name had been given us by Sydney Nowill as the best muleteer for the job. We arrived and Ibrahim, his wife, colourfully dressed in the local costume, and the whole family made us welcome and honoured guests with a cordiality which was no less for being inarticulate. Removing our shoes we sat cross-legged on mats spread out on the earthen floor of their simple home, eating with our fingers in folds of unleavened bread, food from the communal dish. We were not allowed to cook for ourselves and five times we were fed and refreshed by these good people but they would take no payment. Later when we tried to settle up for the hire of donkeys, at the mention of money there came into Ibrahim’s face a look of utter distaste. We pressed him to accept but only the exact figure would he take —not a fraction more. But this is typical of Turkey where one often finds oneself doing inverse bargaining for goods or services that seem to be too lightly valued.
That night we faced the most striking scene of our Turkish travels. Enhanced by dispersing thunder clouds the whole western range of the Ala Dag was spread before us, glowing rich orange in the evening light; giant jagged limestone peaks, they were fully Dolomitic in size and shape. Dominating ah others was Demirkazik, the only peak with a history of several ascents but its height and isolation made it the greatest challenge. And here in our too early estimation of these mountains we made an error. Snow on the northern faces we had seen as we approached the range; here, viewed from the west, the hot evening sun seemingly warming every gully and crack of that face, not one tiny vestige of it could be seen. This was the face by which we should ascend and the south and east sides of the mountain must be equally free. It seemed unnecessary to add ice axes to our load and we left them behind. It was a decision we were much to regret.
The heat of the Anatolian sun makes no start too early. We rose before dawn following Ibrahim, his son and our two overloaded donkeys. At about 7000 feet on the upper pastures we found the camels and black tents of the ‘yuruks’. These are simple nomadic herdsmen, possibly the descendants of the Seljuks, those Turkish tribes who had preceded the Ottomans out of the steppes of central Asia. We were to have friendly contact with them for they needed medical care and they came with gifts of sheep’s milk yogourt. A thousand feet higher, through the steep defile of the Narpiz Gorge, we entered the great cirque of Yalacik. Amid a meadow rich with alpine flowers, a green oasis in a stony waste, flowed a stream. It bubbled out among the rocks but in a dozen yards was lost again, evaporated on the hot stones. A little below stood a boulder offering the only possible shade in these parts. We had brought no tents, nor indeed had need of them; we slept in the open beside the boulder and on our off days rotated round it in opposition to the sun which was now, together with thirst, to be our greatest foe.
The next day we continued up the valley through the Upper Narpiz Gorge skirting the foot of Demirkazik which rises steeply up a 5,000 foot confusion of buttresses, ribs, gullies and towers. A climber here might be defeated by the very intricacy of this disordered face. If we were to traverse the mountain, which we hoped to do, it might well be down this face that we should have to find a route, but so complex were the crags and gullies that we could make no order of them or pick an obvious line. From above it would be even more difficult but perhaps further to the east we should find an easier alternative. We satisfied ourselves that day by simply reaching the col by which time the hot sun and the torments of thirst did not induce further exertion. It had been a useful reconnaissance and we had gained some knowledge; if altitude had reduced the temperature this was not apparent, we were as much grilled here by the high sun as at the lower levels; water, away from the green haven around our base camp boulder, was not to be found and finally the peaks were steeper, more complex and uncompromising than we had earlier judged. If there are easier ascents few were to be found in this watershed.
One peak that we considered less difficult than others we selected for a training exercise. We needed some training, not only for muscles softened by weeks of motoring but for acclimatisation to heat and dehydration. What name the mountain possessed, if indeed any, we did not know for the only available maps are on a scale of 1:800,000 and contain no detail or accurate information. All we had was the Esso road map for Turkey which did at least mark Demirgazik. After three hours of scree we roped up by a patch of old snow and took to the rocks following an obvious line of weakness, a dried up watercourse, which seemed to rise unbroken to the crest of the ridge. The rock was delightfully sound, but so smooth and rounded that when the angle steepened we were forced out on to the gully wall. This was steeper still but easy and we could have made rapid upward progress had we not found ourselves now on rock bountiful indeed in holds but utterly loose. The whole mountainside was unstable, nothing could be trusted. Thus we learnt a further lesson; where easy the rock was dangerous, where safe it was impossible.
We failed to return to the watercourse so we followed this new line up the tottering face, moving one at a time, painfully slowly and with the utmost caution. A dozen alternative routes presented themselves up chimney, groove, gully or buttress but the rocks swept up to such a height that for the first time we were beginning to wonder if all the daylight hours of one day were sufficient, at least at such a pace as ours, to trace through this rock complexity a route to the summit, and return. We were even more doubtful of any justification for continuing at all on this dangerous rock and when Peter swung on the rope, the whole ledge on which he had been standing having collapsed beneath him, we knew that we must retreat.
This chastening experience might have made the attainment of Demirkazik seem remote but at least there we should not be treading new ground and earlier climbers had written of no great trial or terror. Furthermore we knew the way; Sydney Nowill had briefed us well and a copy of Hodgkin’s account we had brought with us. We were to ascend by what should be known as the Hodgkin-Peck Couloir which for almost 3,000 feet cuts deep into the west face. Peter had already reconnoitered the route almost to its foot. Our only doubt was the descent.
We set off in the dark stumbling over block scree, our rucksacks heavy with water containers. We knew that we were as likely to be defeated by dehydration and heat exhaustion as by length and difficulty. After three hours or so of murderous scree we gained the foot of the couloir—the same one we thought we had seen from Camardi glowing red in the evening sun. Surprised and horrified we found it to be a long ribbon of snow which, when we came to it, was hard and consolidated, if not at that hour and level frozen. With ice-axe and crampons this would have made a speedy line of ascent and we cursed our imprudence in leaving them behind in the village. But all was not lost for like a Scottish gully in advanced spring there was a gap, a sort of chimney, between snow and bounding wall. To force our way up this would be slow and perhaps difficult but it tempted us forward at any rate to see how far we could get.
For eight hours we were in that gully squirming up between ice and rock, kicking steps at intervals where the gap narrowed, climbing cave pitches or escaping up the bounding wall to find for a time an easier route on the face. Where we could safely do so we moved together but our progress was more often one at a time. For some hours we were in blissful shade, then as the day advanced the sun struck mercilessly down. But we were not too ill prepared; we had a small petrol stove and we halted to make soup and melt snow for our flasks.
The couloir mounted to a deep notch on the summit ridge; somewhere before that we knew we must leave it and take to the face. The wrong exit and we should be defeated, lost in a confusion of buttresses and towers. Among several possibilities we fortunately found the right one and only 500 feet now separated us from the top. On iced rocks Sydney Nowill’s party had taken four hours on this section, but although the climbing was now more serious, we completed the ascent in half that time. At 5.00 p.m., exactly 13 hours from our camp departure, we stood on the summit and on the brink of the longest steepest wall in the whole of Asia Minor. As if cut by a giant knife the north face fell away in an unbroken drop of almost 3,000 feet, smooth and absolutely perpendicular.
It had been obvious for some hours that nightfall would halt us still high on our mountain. Although this was not part of our plan and we were ill prepared for it, a forced bivouac in these latitudes has few terrors. Dehydration rather than cold would be our greatest danger and discomfort but now, a little flushed with success, it seemed a small price to pay. We had no hope of finding water or, on this side, even a patch of snow, but we must get off the steeper rocks in the few remaining hours of daylight.
Nowill’s party, who had made the only previous traverse and had likewise been forced to bivouac, had started their descent by a long abseil down the south face. What we had already seen of this side was not encouraging and it seemed to us that the east ridge would follow an easier line. We followed a series of massive smooth boiler-plate slabs inclined at a fairly gentle angle, keeping the frightful edge of the north wall on our left. When the slabs steepened in a convex slope we escaped to the right into a tempting gully which lured us down for a couple of hundred feet until suddenly it changed direction and plunged into unfathomable depths. Painfully we returned to our slabs. In truth they were not too steep, a bold man could have walked down them with his hands in his pockets, but we were not bold and the slabs were littered with loose pebbles so that an unwary step would have caused a fall which, with no natural belays—and imprudently we wasted no time making artificial ones—would have been disastrous to the whole party. Gaining only moral support from the rope we descended, now too tired and anxious fully to appreciate the majesty of a hundred peaks bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. Just before nightfall we reached a ledge sufficient in size to accommodate us all and here we composed ourselves for the long wait for dawn, our only comfort a brew of rum punch made with our last water and fuel.
We lay close together and shivered for ten hours, suffering now from cold as earlier we had done from heat. When at last sun and circulation returned we roped up and continued our descent. Soon we were out of difficulties and we could hurry down with little need for caution, the torments of thirst urging us to speed. But there was still a long way to go and it was nearly 11.00 a.m. before we were at camp blissfully soaking up gallons of water. We had been on the mountain almost 31 hours. That evening Ali came up with a donkey ready for an early descent the next day.
My 1965 trip to Turkey has no place in this Journal for there were no mountains except those we could climb in a car. I went with a friend who was collecting material for a B.B.C. programme. But if my earlier visits to Turkey were trips, my 1966 journey really was a bona fide expedition with all that goes with it—a proper name, headed writing paper, suitably lettered vehicles, a press write-up and, much more important, the support of the Royal Geographical Society; all combined to add status to an otherwise very modest enterprise. I had been asked by the Yorkshire Schools Exploring Society to lead an expedition and since this could give me an opportunity of visiting the now de-restricted area of the Kackar Mountains of Lazistan, I was glad to accept. We would be the first British expedition to the southern watershed.
We were a party of seven; my very knowledgeable deputy was Alastair Allen, recently returned from his second Northern Afghanistan Expedition. Alan Radermacher was the highly qualified geologist and botanist and the surveyor was a civil engineer from Leeds, Ian Salkeld. In addition we had three 18 year old boys, Richard Leckenby, Andrew Chirnside and Bryan Holliday, all selected from the Vlth forms of Yorkshire schools. From Ankara we hoped to have the services of a Turkish mountaineer to act as liaison officer. The Vauxhall Motor Company lent us two Bedford vehicles and we managed to obtain 500 man-day rations at a cost to us of less than £10. We did very well out of this because we sold our surplus food to the British Embassy in Ankara for £40, so that on our return we were able to dine and wine at the best restaurants in half the capitals of Eastern Europe.
To travel as an expedition is rarely as much fun as to travel as an individual, nevertheless our enjoyment was enhanced by avoiding tourist centres and organised camp sites. Actually we never camped in the sense that we put up tents for, as on all my other Turkish trips, we simply slept in the open beside the vehicles. Our policy was to drive off into the country away from the main road, seeking some sanctuary close to a village. Of course in Communist countries such behaviour is forbidden to western travellers but we considered it worth the risk and indeed it never failed to be rewarding, particularly in Eastern Europe where contact with the west is eagerly sought. No officials ever disturbed us and our friendly relations with the simple people of many lands gave us some of our most lasting and pleasant memories. We made good progress and seven days out from Dunkirk we were swimming in the Sea of Marmara; two days later we were in Ankara.
In spite of doubts in high official places no hindrance was put in the way of our access to the mountains of the Soviet border. Officially all eastern provinces are now de-restricted but we had been able to obtain no written confirmation of this, only vague assurance. Actually some other parties travelling to frontier areas were not so favoured and we wondered afterwards if our good fortune was perhaps due to the addition to our party of Giirol Tan. He purported to be a Turkish mountaineer but in fact, as we later discovered, he was an officer in the Secret Police. He always slept with a loaded automatic under his pillow, whether to defend himself against us or brigands we could not decide.
Now grossly overloaded we trundled east for another four days to Erzerum and through the highly spectacular Tortem Gorges to Yusufeli and the last town of any importance. The arrival of seven strange Englishmen caused a stir among the population of this remote mountain stronghold and we were no doubt the topic of conversation in the coffee houses for many days. The ‘Vali’ or Principal Governor entertained us, we registered with the police, the military offered us an escort, but our greatest claim to fame or notoriety was the purchase of the town’s entire stock of ‘Raki’, a national drink which could be correctly described as instant intoxication. The report of our remarkable alcoholic excesses crossed the mountains to the north coast long before we did.
Beyond Yusufeli we drove on tortuous roads up the bed of a gorge too confined for habitation but after a dozen miles and just short of the last village of Barhal we could go no further. A gang of road workers were still drilling and blasting. A long term plan is to take the road round the Kackar massif to the Black Sea, piercing the Pontic barrier, which will permit the upland valley dwellers to market their fruit and vegetables and profit from the great timber resources of the lower slopes. Turkey is short of forest yet here an enormous unexploited wealth decays into the ground.
Our horsemen came the next morning; they were handsome swarthy Georgians, the Islamised descendants of a Caucasian Christian people. It was a long and tiresome task sorting out a mountain of equipment and loading the six horses, so the sun was high before we set out; as yet unfit and unacclimatised to exertion in the heat, we were to suffer for this delay.
We climbed up well watered slopes rich with grapes, cherries, apples, pears and plums all in fruit. On the upper outskirts of the village of Barhal we came to Tamara Church, ” its gabled roof protruding above the foliage. It is a beautiful basilica of smooth grey stone built by Georgian Christians a thousand years ago. For several hours we walked through orchards and forest, and even above the tree line it was lush and green and in remarkable contrast to the arid slopes of the Ala Dag. On the upper pastures we found no tents and camels of nomads but sturdy stone or timbered ‘yalas’ occupied during the summer months. Great herds of sheep and goats grazed on the mountain slopes. Above the last of the ‘yalas’ at a height of 7,260 feet we made a camp on a pleasant green spur. It had taken seven hours to ascend from Barhal which was more a measure of our unfitness than of height or distance.
Our purpose here was to work, to make a map and to make some small contribution of knowledge to an area which we were the first to study seriously. To justify the support we had received we must fully utilise our limited time in the field so that we were to have little relaxation; climbing mountains just for the fun of it would be secondary to other tasks. Early every morning Salkeld led his party off, first to measure a Base Line, later to the summit of vital peaks, while under the skilled direction of Radermacher, others collected and pressed rare flowers and geologised over a wide area.
Our camp lay at the foot of the Kackar Peak, 11,750 feet, too close for us to admire its full majesty, but we could see something of the steep wall that formed its eastern face. To the north lay the great cwm of Hansaret Dere entirely bounded by steep rock peaks of considerable distinction. Most imposing perhaps was Biiyiik Kapi at the head of its northern branch. This was a great rock monolith rising in a vertical wall a full 2,000 feet from the scree. A mile of lesser peaks separated this summit from the six rock needles of the Alti-parmak (the Six Finger Group), not unlike Chamonix Aiguilles, and the complete traverse of them would give the mountaineer his greatest challenge in these parts. According to the leading Turkish authority none of them had yet been climbed. This was partly confirmed when Allen with Giirol Tan climbed the most easterly of the Altiparmak which they did by tracing a route directly up one of the long buttresses of the south-east face. They saw no cairn or other evidence of earlier ascent. This was a useful reconnaissance for they found the rock, which was metamorphic, excellent climbing material and basically sound; it also indicated that Giirol Tan was no mountaineer and he returned a little shaken from this excursion, never to climb again.
While the survey party were still occupied on the Base Line, Radermacher and I made a reconnaissance up the Hansaret Dere to the col bounding its eastern edge and from there to the crest of the main ridge. The monolith of Bliyiik Kapi whose formidable and vertical cliffs we had skirted on the ascent, appeared not now as one summit at all but as a complex group of four, all steep and rocky and of similar height. Along the ridge to the east was a prominent peak, whose name we could never learn, which tempted us forward. We roped up but could move together and only the last few feet to the summit, on shattered rock of a different kind, caused some caution. We felt certain that this must be a first ascent but we found a small cairn and the card of a German-Austrian party of the previous year.
Where elsewhere we had an unrestricted view across a complex pattern of lesser foothills to the yellow parched plateau of Anatolia, to the north we looked down on a sea of cloud which extended unbroken far out over the Black Sea. This is a curious climatic feature of the Pontic Alps. In marked contrast to the rest of Turkey, here Black Sea breezes bring an almost perpetual bank of cloud with humid and frequent summer rain, but the dry air of the Anatolian hinterland dominates the southern watershed of the range and holds at bay the humid mass limiting it to 8,000 feet and rarely allowing it to cross the ridge. Below those clouds lay lush wet forests, almost tropical in density, descending to the coastal tea plantations. It must be discouraging for those who choose to explore these mountains from the north; Robin Fedden reports returning each day from the sun-drenched upper pastures to the Scotch drizzle and sodden tents at their Base Camp. Except for two short thunderstorms we had no rain at all.
Work on the Base Line completed, mountains had now to be selected for survey stations. When a heavy theodolite and tripod had to be lugged up, as well as plane table, we wished to avoid serious rock climbing and sometimes an earlier reconnaissance was advisable. All these peaks had steep intimidating crags but most possessed an easy route if it could be found. It was so for instance with the Kackar Peak which from camp appeared so frightening, but we ascended by way of Karagol where, close to a glacial lake, in a rough stone shelter hidden among the crags, dwelt a turbaned shepherd and his wife. Long boulder slopes led upwards to the ridge and the final rocks of the summit pyramid presented few problems. In a book below the cairn we found a record of earlier ascents, the German Austrian party again and two Turkish parties; all we could claim, for what it was worth, was a first British ascent.
But one peak more difficult and rewarding than the others which we were certainly the first to climb was a further summit of the Altiparmak group ascended by Salkeld and two of the boy surveyors. While they were on this ridge Allen and I were engaged on the monolith like peak of Biiytik Kapi which offered us at least the most dramatic challenge. Giirol Tan firmly declared it impossible. The evening before this climb we had carried a bivouac up the Hansaret Dere almost to its foot. We slept in the open by a patch of melting snow, disturbed only by the passing of some heavy-footed beast, probably a bear, up the scree beside us. We looked at the eastern end of the wall, where except by artificial means no route seemed possible and walked back to the middle where the angle relented. At first diagonally left and then directly up a series of cracks and chimneys, we climbed for 1,000 feet on good sound rock, quite steep but so amply furnished with holds that there was no great difficulty. We had so far made good progress but the final tower seemed less promising for it was a great upthrust of steeper and smoother rock possessing few stances or any natural line of weakness. To commit ourselves to such an unbroken stretch of virgin rock, without knowing of an easier line of descent, was however a challenge we were not called upon to accept, for having reached a shoulder we were able to see round the back of the monolith.
Here lay the key to the problem for we found a gully into which we could easily descend. If it were climbable it would give us half our height. It seemed like cheating to leave this exposed and exhilarating face but we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that after all we were mountaineers seeking the easiest line up what we certainly believed was a virgin peak. Like all gullies it was loose and when we were able to we escaped on to the wall now climbing up a series of awkward scoops directly for the summit.
This, the most improbable of all the Kackar peaks, was ours and as we stood together on its confined top we hoped the others, now occupying our bivouac site a vertical 2,000 feet below, would see us and be suitably impressed; they were not to know that we had cheated and gone round the back. But alas we had again been forestalled for on the topmost rock stood a cairn, small as if in apology, but undoubtedly of human origin. The bold line of Biiyiik Kapi must have been as compelling an attraction to our German-Austrian predecessors as to us. Anyway they had left an imbedded piton which gave us a line for our first abseil.
There remained now only one major peak for the surveyors to ascend and the map would be complete, that is within the limits we had set ourselves. Much more remains to be done; to the east a little and to the west for another 15 miles, but our watershed, containing perhaps a third of the major peaks, was fixed with sufficient detail and we hope a reasonable degree of accuracy. No doubt the Turks themselves will come along some day with unlimited time to survey the whole range with a thoroughness that we could not hope to match, but at least it had been interesting and creative activity and for the boys an admirable exercise. Time was now running out and all that could now be done was to return to a lower level by the most interesting possible route. With this in mind Allen arid I were to return to Barhal with the heavy equipment while the remainder of the party made a three days’ trek over the mountains to the village of Ayder to which we would take the vehicles. It was understood a good road connected this place with the coastal town of Pazar.
Allen and I, suffering delays from two landslides (the catastrophic Erzerum earthquake had occurred less than a week earlier) and three punctures drove round the eastern end of the range to Hopa and the humid heat of a sunless Black Sea. From the coastal tea plantations we returned through a curtain of perpetual clouds to the mountains, on the worst roads of the whole expedition where a ten mile section took half a day. Through well watered slopes dense with forests of beech, hornbeam, alder, Spanish chestnut and spruce we drove, following the steep side valley of the Firtina, a torrent fed by the melting snows and glaciers of the Kackar Dag and crossed here and there in its lower reaches by beautifully proportioned Genoese bridges. It seemed impossible that this fearful steep and stony track could lead to anything more than a few hovels but suddenly we emerged from the forest into the busy little community of Ayder. In almost perpetual cloud and drizzle flourishes here a spartan holiday spa, incredibly ramshackle but offering the therapy of natural hot springs and relief from the coastal heat.
The two parties joined, we returned to the Black Sea which we were to follow for the first two days of the long haul back to England, this time travelling through Rumania and Hungary. Twelve days later and nearly home we saw the snow of the Alps. They may be more majestic than the Turkish mountains but I felt no regret at having forsaken their crowded huts and well trodden routes to seek the unspoiled simplicity of lesser known peaks. Soon more and more mountaineers will discover the delights of Turkey and whether they go as a simple climbing trip or for more serious study they will have all the fun of an expedition, where they will need to organise, have few books and no maps to guide them, but where they will have the reward of new routes in plenty, strange and exotic scenes and a friendly, unsophisticated if uncomprehending people to welcome them. It will be many many years before an onslaught of tourists will destroy the charm of the simple peasants of Anatolia.