Kaçkar Traverse: Ayder to Yaylalar

Kaçkar Mountains, Pontic Alps · Turkey

Challenging7 daysAsia~£700 est.

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Overview

Turkey's rainiest mountains hide its finest trekking. Above the tea terraces of Rize the Kaçkar rise in a wall of granite that catches every cloud rolling off the Black Sea, and for a week you thread hanging valleys between yayla summer villages — Ayder's hot springs at one end, the stone hamlets of Yaylalar and Olgunlar at the other. The set piece is a pre-dawn push from Dilberdüzü camp to the 3,937m summit of Kaçkar Dağı, with the glacial bowl of Deniz Gölü glittering below you on the way down. The variable that catches people out is the mist: on most summer days cloud swallows the ridges by late morning, so starts are early and a GPS track matters when the waymarks vanish. Nights split between camps and family-run pensions where dinner is muhlama — molten cheese and cornmeal — after ten hours on your feet. Fly to Trabzon or Rize–Artvin, then dolmuş via Çamlıhemşin to Ayder. July to September only; snow lingers into early summer. Budget around £700 for a guided week with pension nights, or half that self-sufficient under canvas.