Turkish Standard: Geyikbayırı

Sport climbing at its best. That’s quite essentially what the area close to Geyikbayırı, Turkey, is all about. Not much more, but also nothing less; simply perfect climbing. The lack of distraction is also what makes this place so special, it’s climb-eat-sleep-repeat. We’ve been there for ten days, and even though we had honest and well-reasoned attempts to do a few rest-days, we simply couldn’t manage. We had to climb ten days in a row. The routes we found ourselves looking at, mysteriously, were just too good not to be climbed. The result, of course, was an unparalleled continuous pump in especially my left forearm, also lasting for around ten days.

There is, of course, much more to be found in this place than just the mere repetitiveness of climbing: The Mediterranean sea close by, some two-thousand year old Lycian ruins close by, ‘eternal’ flames happily and steadily burning for pretty much as long, and a market every Sunday, unveiling the whole diversity and deliciousness of Turkish cuisine. And the Turkish people, who are quite definitely among the most friendly and hospitable folk on this planet. Just not a lot of climbers to be found among them, quite probably for cultural reasons, but a small scene is developing. A good thing, because the potential for highest quality rock climbs in Turkey is close to endless.

So what we came for, primarily, is to lay hands on a very tiny fraction of this perfect limestone, mushrooming everywhere you look. For the Geyikbayırı locals, we found out while hitchhiking up and down, it still feels a bit strange to see a bunch of highly developed apes arriving from all corners of the planet just to hang on rocks, those rocks they have always been passing mindlessly while driving up to their village. Why, they asked us, why on Earth do we all come here? What do we want? And how, on Earth, did we get to know about those rocks? Legitimate questions, and I honestly struggled to find an explanatory answer. Doesn’t make much sense, if you really think about it. Basically, it’s just what climbers do. The only answer I can give is compressed in the below pixels. It roughly translate to: That’s why.