During our first day on Erciyes, the winds were howling, and the upper lift was closed due to poor visibility. We decided to skin toward the summit anyway, but dubious avalanche conditions forced us to stop. Luckily, the powder turns on the way down made up for the struggle. Tof Henry leads the climb before going deep during the descent. Words, Photos and Captions Daniel Rönnbäck building comes into view just as we pull into the parking lot, its minarets and blue domes appearing especially dramatic alongside neighboring ultramodern condo buildings and high-speed quads. Everything is quiet; my watch reads 5 a.m., but in a few hours the lifts will start spin-ning and the mosque will ring with visitors taking their pre-powder morning prayers. Snow whips our faces as we gear up, preparing for our first day of skiing in Turkey. We’d landed in Kayseri only a few hours before; now the city and its one million citizens are completely obscured by the storm. So is our objective, the 12,851-foot summit of Mount Erciyes, nearly 6,900 feet above us. Still, we’ve flown halfway across Europe to be here, so we put on our skins and start climbing. This is an unexpected trip, to an unlikely location. March conditions in the French Alps had been meager, and with nothing but high pressure forecasted for Europe, Tof Henry, Chad Sayers and myself began looking for a last-minute snow escape. Quick research showed a storm front headed across Turkey, and 12 hours later we were at the Geneva airport, boarding our flight to Kayseri. Located just more than 200 miles southeast of the coun-try’s capital of Ankara, Kayseri sits along both the ancient Silk Road and Persian Royal Road, two of the most important cultural conduits between Europe and East Asia. It’s a city with deep history, a place where empires exchanged ideas, art, religion and war. The surrounding region has an equally extensive legacy, famous for hot air-balloon demonstrations, centuries-old vineyards and churches carved into the sides of wild volcanic formations. It’s also a city in a country that’s seen turmoil. Turkey has long been a stable presence in the Middle East, but recent political rumblings—including bombings and a mass shoot-ing—have put the nation on edge. A few friends warned us of danger before we left Europe, but the only animosity we’ve experienced so far came from a pissed-off cab driver. The snow-covered slopes of Mount Erciyes and its accom-panying resort are what drew us here. While not an ambitious objective as far as skiing goes, the area itself is a vibrant mix of worlds, as evidenced by the colorful mosque disappearing behind us in the storm. THE 072 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Four: Page 72
