Ripping the Turkish Pow, a ski season in Turkey

When I moved to Ecuador, I had no idea how much I would miss skiing. I thought slugging up equatorial volcanoes like Cayambe (photos), the Illinizas, and Cotopaxi would satiate my snow demons. On one hand, it did satisfy my craving for cold weather, but on the other hand, skiing and climbing are VASTLY different activities. I have a need for speed, and climbing is many things, but high-octane, it is not.



So, it was with great excitement that Erin and I upgraded our skis in Boulder this summer, and headed off to our new lives in Turkey. We had no idea what to expect, but preliminary research told me that skiing did exist, and, what the hell, we knew the Alps were only a stone's throw away.

It took awhile for it to get cold here in Anatolia, most of the fall was spent rock climbing and periodically pulling the skis out and looking at them...imagining how they would handle the Turkish pistes. But, finally, in the last weeks of December, we made our first venture out to the resort of Kartalkaya. Two hours West of Ankara, Erin and I arrived on a white-out day, so, literally this was our first impression of skiing in Turkey.



This was clearly an awful day of skiing, but, when you've been living on the Equator for two years after spending 7 amazing seasons in Colorado; well, you're just happy to be sliding down a mountain, no matter if you can see it or not!



Upon finishing our first day on the slopes in two years, Erin and I retired to our hotel. The ski resorts in Turkey are an all inclusive affair, so, you really get a better deal by just going ahead and staying in hotel where your meals, booze, and lift tickets are included in the (in this case) $100 a night rate! Not being the fancy-shmancy ski hotel types (we always couch surfed, or stayed in the back of our truck in Colorado), we didn't really know what to expect, how to behave, or what to do with ourselves inside an actual slope-side hotel. Turns out, you eat, drink, hot-tub, drink, eat, sit by a fireplace, eat, and, yeah, DRINK. Yes, even in Muslim Turkey. Walking down to the lobby after stripping off our ski clothes, we were greeted with proper ski lodge fireplaces, pine-tree rafters, appetizers, and hot mulled wine. The skiing may have been a bit of a white-out disaster, but the hotel was good living! This is a part of the ski life I have never experienced...







After a great night of sleep facilitated by rack of lamb, shrimp cocktail, Turkish "Pide" pizza, grilled chicken, baklava, and plenty of free Efes beer (please click here for the Efes theme song!), we woke up to an actual view of what we had spent the day skiing blindly down the previous day. This is the view out our window: we were pretty impressed. It's not huge, but it's decent. The resort extends off to the left, and right, but is really just this front side of the mountain.


However, that means that this backside is completely open to backcountry skiers. So, who wants to join me for some first descents???


As this was only our second day out, and because the slopes were absolutely devoid of people, we just decided to get our powder turns in-bounds. Our second day of skiing in Turkey was characterized by spooning powder turns next to each other, across moderate American "Blue" runs, while the few Turks who were skiing never strayed off the pistes. Our tracks stayed un-varnished, pasted in the snow all day long:)





Sadly, eventually we had to stop lining up our turns, and steer ourselves back home. The slopes weren't ultra-steep, but there a few spots where the angle approached a "black" grade for a short amount of time. The descents were pretty modest; even if you skied to the lowest lift, below the hotel, you only got 675 feet of vertical drop. That's about the same as our old goofy resort, Wolf Laurel, in Asheville, North Carolina. BUT, it was powder. Nobody was there. Beer and wine were free. Rack of lamb is like a piece of meat butter. AND, for shit's sake, it's Turkey, it's not exactly known the world over for skiing. So, we were happy.

That is, until we tried to drive the iced-up roads home. And, that's where I'll leave it for now. I've got to go pack for my big fat Greek Sport Climbing vacation. I hope all of you are off enjoying spring snow, desert routes, and lots of whiskey.

-Bones