4 December 2020
Citdibi - A Future Turkish hardcore Mecca
Illya Bakhmet-Smolenskyi, 15, who lately has been living in Turkey where he has done 17 routes 8b+ and harder, tells us about a Citdibi 8a database, a potential new hardcore Mecca. (c) Pim Shaitosa
"Citdibi is near Antalya. The place is almost like a quarantine zone itself. No people or shops around, just a tiny village which has not more than 10-20 houses. Complete peace resides here, so it's really nice during and after Covid-19.
For a long time being Turkey and its Geyikbayiri obtained the title of an "amateur climbing crag". No hard and confirmed routes and a huge load of easy climbs made it an ultimate area for beginners and pre-pro dudes with seemingly no potential for hard grades. Even though it could be called my home crag and the place had a major influence on my climbing evolution, it starts to seemingly run out of its potential for progression.
That's when I discovered a magnificent crag of Cidtibi, which was mainly developed and discovered by Tobias and Duygu Haug and some other locals for quite a while now. It's an enormously huge, slightly overhanging wall full of beautiful tufa strips and crimp sections. The tick list already has more than fifty routes starting with 8a and harder, not counting all the unclimbed projects and potential routes. And developing here gets faster and faster! Numerous new FA's in 8c and higher grade, hard routes that start to border with the mythical 9a's and projects that are seemingly much harder than that! The "new" route that already had two ascents but no grading is supposed to be one of those bordering ones.
One of the shortest and hardest lines in Chidtibi, which goes solely on crimps and doesn't have any proper rest. It could be described as a hardcore non-stop finger killer with a stretchy dyno at the very end, which kept shutting me down for almost ten goes! In my opinion, this route, with a bunch of other not-climbed harder projects on the Chidtibi wall will slowly lead us to Turkey's climbing evolution."
"Citdibi is near Antalya. The place is almost like a quarantine zone itself. No people or shops around, just a tiny village which has not more than 10-20 houses. Complete peace resides here, so it's really nice during and after Covid-19.
For a long time being Turkey and its Geyikbayiri obtained the title of an "amateur climbing crag". No hard and confirmed routes and a huge load of easy climbs made it an ultimate area for beginners and pre-pro dudes with seemingly no potential for hard grades. Even though it could be called my home crag and the place had a major influence on my climbing evolution, it starts to seemingly run out of its potential for progression.
That's when I discovered a magnificent crag of Cidtibi, which was mainly developed and discovered by Tobias and Duygu Haug and some other locals for quite a while now. It's an enormously huge, slightly overhanging wall full of beautiful tufa strips and crimp sections. The tick list already has more than fifty routes starting with 8a and harder, not counting all the unclimbed projects and potential routes. And developing here gets faster and faster! Numerous new FA's in 8c and higher grade, hard routes that start to border with the mythical 9a's and projects that are seemingly much harder than that! The "new" route that already had two ascents but no grading is supposed to be one of those bordering ones.
One of the shortest and hardest lines in Chidtibi, which goes solely on crimps and doesn't have any proper rest. It could be described as a hardcore non-stop finger killer with a stretchy dyno at the very end, which kept shutting me down for almost ten goes! In my opinion, this route, with a bunch of other not-climbed harder projects on the Chidtibi wall will slowly lead us to Turkey's climbing evolution."
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