New Antalya Rock Climbing Guidebook
A new edition of the Antalya rock climbing guidebook has just been published. The best place to go sport climbing in Turkey is undoubtedly Antalya, and in particular the crags of Geyikbayiri and Olympos.
Geyikbayiri is the largest sport climbing area in Turkey with over 1,000 routes and is situated only 25km from the busy tourist city of Antalya. The climbing is on superb limestone rock, with many features ranging from grey limestone walls with small crimps, overhanging walls with stalactites and tufas, to pocketed walls. The main crag is 1.5km long and offers routes across all grades from F4’s to F8’s. The quality and beauty of the rock at Geyikbayiri, plus Antalya’s climate, and the relative ease of transportation are the prime reasons that pull climbers from all over the World to the area.
Close to Geyikbayiri is another crag called Citdibi that has been nicknamed by the locals as “mini Ceuse”. This is due to the fact that many of the routes are hard (F6c to F9a) that typifies a crag with long stalactites and is mainly overhanging. There are over 120 single pitch routes at Citdibi ranging from F6a to F9a, plus 1 monster 150m long multi-pitch route.
Further south is another excellent sport climbing area at Olympos along with nearby Cirali. These 2 areas consist of several crags with almost 400 routes on perfect limestone rock across all grades. The rock climbing has slabs with small pockets that require technical moves and lots of balance through to tufas and huge roofs. Some of the crags also have the advantage of only being a few hundred metres from the beach.
Further south is the deep water soloing (DWS) area of Yarasali. The routes are between 8 to 20m long on overhanging limestone rock featuring tufas and pockets. These routes can only be accessed by boat that can be hired from Olympos (approximately 1 hour each way).
This new 7th edition of the Antalya rock climbing guidebook describes almost 1,600 sport routes at Geyikbayiri, Citdibi, Akyarlar, Beycik, Olympos, Cirali, Yarasali, and Kaputas. A portion of the profits of this guidebook are used to buy equipment for new routes and the maintenance of the existing ones.
This Antalya rock climbing guidebook describes almost 1,600 sport routes at Geyikbayiri, Citdibi, Akyarlar, Beycik, Olympos, Cirali, Yarasali, and Kaputas.