The 7a Marathon

Yesterday Nasim, an Iranian climber, and I attempted the Geyikbayiri 7a Marathon, an "endurance crag tour." The goal is simple: touch the anchor on all 42 routes graded 7a (5.11d). One person does one route and the other person the next route, so each person does 21 total. We started climbing at 4am with headlamps in the area's farthest removed and highest sector, and worked our way downhill, doing a route at almost every sector. We stopped at 8pm, after having done 17 each, or 32 total. Nasim desperately wanted to keep going, but I was unattached to finishing them all and found little enjoyment in attempting to locate and climb the remaining routes by headlamp. We took one photo at 5am.

I can usually onsight (climb without falling the first try, without prior knowledge of the route) most 7a sport routes. Of the 42 7a routes in Geyikbayiri I'd done 4 before. My goal for the challenge was to do ten cleanly, but this turned out to be optimistic. The early morning hours were brutal and my body felt cold and jerky, like a rusty lawn mower. Things improved when the sun came up and we both started climbing better. The hardest part of the day proved to be finding each route. Scrambling up and down talus strewn hillsides and forging through dense stone oaks (a miniature oak with very sharp holly-like leaves) was much more challenging than I expected. We trekked up to some remote, very sharp, low quality routes, which took up to 30 mins one way. Yet we also climbed some amazingly fun lines. Though we stuck to our alternating order, it was interesting to see each of our strengths and weaknesses. Our climbing styles are nearly opposite. Nasim is a kneebar pro and excels at all steep routes. (kneebars are where you press your knee against a rock feature to take weight off your upperbody.) Where I struggle through an overhanging section she finds creative rests and moves up with ease. In contrast, I do better on technical vertical routes with smaller holds and precise footwork.

We started at the far left in Kulluin (not pictured) and traversed left to right across the upper cliff band, then descended to Alabalik (lower right), then went back up to Turkish Standard and Yilan. The final sector, that we didn't go to, is Trebanna (lower left).

The best part of the day, for me, was trying to onsight new routes as fast as possible. You have no time to milk a nice rest or to think about the best sequence. Your body and brain move in unison. Hand, foot, hand foot, faster, faster, faster. You do the first thing that comes to mind and commit to it. Sometimes the sequence works and sometimes it doesn't.

I've now been to every sector within walking distance. In my remaining two weeks I plan to go back and finish the last 10 routes we didn't do yesterday.