The real beauty and the beast

This is Ron, and I am back from the Kachkar mountain - Turkey.

I was in a 2 week trek, with 12 good friends from the army. The trail itself starts at a small pastorally village called Ayder. We slept there in our tents, in the middle of the village, on a great grassy slope. On the second day we walked up 1.5 kilometer - a mile up-hill, from an altitude of 1200m to 2700m. From 3600 feet to 8100 feet (I sure hope my math is good). Then we passed Avisor, a small (about 40 people leave there), and from there to a mountain pass on the next day. The passing of the mountains should be easier, but we went the wrong way - and this is what we had to do :

in the picture is me, with Gulu (lake, in Turks)- the bravest dog in Turkey. He walked with us from Ayder, and in the mountain pass, when we descended, he couldn't go down, so I made him a harness from a field mattress (MIZRON SHETAH - who-ever wants to translate that) and ropes. After the part of giant boulders and narrow passing, we had 40 meters of icy-snowy slope do go down, with a rope, one-by-one. With 13 people, it takes about 4 hours. So, instead of eating breakfast in the gulu after the mountain pass, we had there the next day's breakfast.

From this point on the trip was rather usual - we didn't have such crazy things to do. We did reach the summit of the kachkar, at 3962 meters high:

upper left, clockwise: Ron(bent down), Regev, Alex, Iftah, Izhar, Yeara, Gadi(in the middle), Tom, Nir, Avigaile and Efrat. Evyatar and Inbal stayed down.

In the trip we had 4-5 cameras, non of which are mine, so I don't have more pictures at the moment. When I will have I will be happy to place them somewhere on the web. I will be more than delighted if someone (Keren) would help me with that.

At the end of the trip we got 2 days of relay Turkish weather - foggy, that one can't see 10 steps ahead, followed by rain. Cold and dark. The village looked like "lower ankton" (from married with children). So we even got to enjoy the real weather, and it's a good thing we got it at the end - nice and cold before returning to the sauna here in Israel.

Questions? I have the answers.

P.S. about Gulu - we found a group of 4 Israelis, who went back to Ayder, so we joined (with a heartbreak) Gulu to them, and added a note - my name is Gulu, I come from Ayder. He is a brave dog - I bet he managed.

Theche kure - thank you.

Ron