Hasan Summit Climbing

Rock Lizards are at the summit of Mountain Hasan!

Rock Lizards were at Hasan Summit Climbing at 19-20 May as Gezginder.

We arrived at the camping area at Saturday. The climb started at 04:00 Sunday morning. The climb up to Damlakaya was rocky (unlike we experienced as full of snow in winter time). Starting from Yılankar, the steep valley at right hand side of Damlakaya, hard snow started, where we started to use crampons and axes. It took us about 7 hours to climb from 1900 m (camping area) to the summit @ 3268m.

The routes on Hasan

The weather was sunny and clear at the beginning. As we started to climb up Yılankar, the fast moving fog and haze covered our magnificent Anatolian view. At the summit, we tried to catch small glimpses of scenery in between the clouds to both south and north of the mountain.

We made the climb down from the valley at right side of Yılankar. Being exposed to sun longer, the snow was deep and soft at the beginning, then started to be harder through the end of the valley. Our team finished the climb successfully with a safe and careful return.

Plateu from camp area and Mert

Rocky fields before Damlakaya. The haze starts to sink.

Gezginder team climbing up the hard snow

Banu wears crampons at the start of Damlakaya

Climb up at Yılankar

The Anatolian scenery down the mountain

Mert through the haze close to the summit

The steep climb down

At the summit, the clouds open up a bit through the other side of the mountain

Cycling in Cappadocia

Rock Lizards were at cycling tour at Cappadocia with Mark Osborne, who is on a world tour with his bicycle.

Mark and Rock Lizards in Cappadocia

We started the cycle from Uçhisar, from where we went down to Göreme. Passing through Göreme Open Air Museum and many scenery points, we arrived at Ürgüp. Going on with the cycling through Mustafapaşa, we were caught in a heavy rain and hail; luckily under the shelter of a gas station. The hail stopped after a long time, the weather was still dark and cool though. Considering this, we started our trip back to Göreme. After repairing a flat tire after Göreme, we arrived back at Uçhisar castle through the nice streets in the village.

You can find more about Mark Osborne and his stay in Ankara in this post.

The group at the top of fairy chimneys

It is hard to cycle through narrow paths in the valleys

Oops, the path has ended!

Cycle up through the rain

And the Endomondo record for the ride is below:

Together with Mark in Ankara

Rock Lizards hosted Mark Osborne, who is on a world tour with his bike.

Mark at Home with his bike unloaded

He started his journey from Britain at January, 2012. He is cycling around the world for Multiple Sclerosis disease. He is in Turkey for the second time, after his accident between Polatlı and Sivrihisar last year. He stayed in Ankara between 4-13 May for obtaining Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan visas.

We had perfect times with Mark during his stay in Ankara. His sincerity, energy and openness to everyone as a life style changed our perspectives. We listened to his many stories around the world, learned a lot about bicycles and got into many exciting ideas about routes around the world. We also cycled around Ankara, including METU campus and Cappadocia. He is about to leave Turkey. We are thrilled to follow his route as he is moving on towards the east, and read about marvelous stories about different kinds of people around the world from his blog.

Here is Mark’s blog. Also, he has a post about his stay together with us. You can follow last records of his spot locator, or watch all records of his journey.

Mark loading the bike before leaving

The bike is about 60 kgs when loaded. Deniz has hard time cycling it.

The group under the moon light at night ride in Yalıncak

MSK logo on Mark's bike

And the following is the Endomondo record for our night ride at Yalıncak.