How to get there:
The town Yuksekova serves as a good starting point. This town has daily
flights to/from Istanbul. Drive east to location N37.42042, E44.10316, elevation
near 1300 meter. A mountain road forks right here. You will soon encounter a
military checkpoint. Continue up this steep road with many sharp curves to near
location N37.45772, E44.06497, elevation about 2070 meter. This is the trailhead.
Route description:
From the trailhead,
the route first crosses an small hill that runs parallel
to the river below, then descends about 40 meter to the river. This trail
next continues upstream in order to access a bridge that
makes crossing very convenient.
Next, the trail climbs a rather steep valley. The trail is quite good and well made with
steps in the beginning and countless switchbacks on its way uphill.
Higher up, the valley extends
in a more gentle manner, ending in a
flat area that is pretty ideal for a base camp.
From base camp, the route runs more or less directly up towards the highest skyline
avoiding obvious difficulties. A track is posted on Peakbagger. The route is fairly
easy to follow, small and larger cairns facilitate navigation.
After ascending a pretty large slope (cairns), the route tends more to (climbers) left
and the main summit area comes
into view. This is separated by a more narrow ridge.
First, you climb on easy slabs
to a local high point, next the route traverses a somewhat
more narrow ridge with exposure on both sides.
There is no real difficulty, the route
remains (YDS) class 2+. When I was there, a fixed rope had been put in place to
protect this passage - not really needed.
The final ascent is still quite a bit of both distance and elevation before
you arrive at the "official summit".
There is a sign as well as a small cairn.
However, one should note that the next summit
along (west) this top ridge is more than
2 meter higher. Thus, it is highly inappropriate that the summit sign has been
placed on the first, lower summit. To get from the first summit point to the true
summit, you first descend along the top of the ridge. Next, there is a more
narrow passage with 2-way exposure. This passage requires care, but is technically
easy. Most people would rate it similar to the narrow section described earlier.
The true summit is marked by a reasonable cairn.
Comments:
This peak, located fairly close to Irak in an area known as Kurdistan,
has been off-limits to foreign visitors until very recently.
The landscape in this area is very rugged, large mountain slopes with
very good colors.
We left Yuksekova around 0830, the drive took about 1:30 hours including
stops at 2 different military check-points. It is unclear what made the
government finance and maintain this very steep mountain road that, at first
look, only serves a few shepherds with their goats.
The walk to base camp follows a good trail that climbs steeply up a side-vally,
perpendicular to the main drainage. The fact that horses may be used to carry
loads to base camp is impressive. There are few trails that are more difficult
for a horse than this one. One may hike up to this base camp in about 2 hours.
The next morning, we started at first daylight. A young woman that acted as an
assistant guide, had started a few hours earlier, since she seemed quite slow.
I told David, that I would start hiking, since it looked like the rest of the
team would get going almost immediately.
However, it turned out that our "assistant guide" had moved off-trail and when they
came across her, convincing her to return to base camp took time. I decided to wait,
but not knowing what was going on, after about 10 minutes, I decided to resume my
ascent.
When I arrived at the "crux" narrow ridge, I caught up with many people that
had started several hours ahead of us while still dark. I nodded hello and passed
all of them, then continued to the summit. Arriving there, I was prepared for quite
a long wait. I knew something unexpected had happened to my friends, but felt very confident
that they would sort this out, then continue to the summit.
While sitting on the summit, I soon noticed the cairn on the next top along the summit ridge.
It certainly looked equally high. I decided to hike across and have alook in the
opposite direction. From across at the next summit, the first summit did indeed look
a bit higher to me. In any case, having visited both points, I returned to the summit
that had an official sign.
After a while, my friends appeared and I was told the reason for the delay. Rob quickly
took a check across with his hand level, and yes indeed the next summit was estimated to
be at least 2 meter higher. Rob also carried a Trimble GPS unit and more careful measurements
were taken on both summits. The results confirmed the initial estimate, the next summit beyond
the official summit point is about 2.5 meter higher.
After a full 1:30 on the summit, it was time to descend. This was quite easy and we reached camp
after slightly more than 2 hours.
It was still before noon, thus we had ample time to relax before clearing camp. The horses
arrived to carry gear and we descended back down to the road. A van should have been there,
but failed to arrive on time. This was not good as we all wanted to have dinner back in
Yuksekova before it got too late. Eventually, the van did come, more than 2 hours late.
This ended my Turkish part of the trip. This peak had been off-limits for many years
due to the close location to the Iran and Irak border as well as being located
in "Kurdistan". Everyone we met in this area would say "welcome to Kurdistan", not
Turkey. However, recent peace talks may hopefully pave the road for peaceful
co-existence and reduce the tensions that have been between the Turkish government
and the Kurdish people living in this region.
