Istanbul Climbers Post Strong Results This Week as Outdoor Season Hits Its Stride

Three Istanbul-based athletes finished on the podium at the Türkiye Açık Hava Tırmanış Kupası regional qualifier held Sunday at the Beykoz Climbing Festival grounds, with Selin Arslan of Boğaziçi Outdoor Sports Club topping the women's lead category with a route rated 8a+ — the hardest clean ascent logged at a domestic qualifying event so far this season. The men's podium went two-to-one in favour of athletes from Kadıköy, underlining the Asian-side district's growing dominance in the city's climbing scene.

The timing matters. July is peak season for outdoor climbing across northwestern Turkey, and Istanbul's clubs are in an arms race to secure berths at the national championships scheduled for Antalya in September. Every regional qualifier result this month feeds directly into the selection rankings. For athletes who spent the brutal June heatwave — which saw excess deaths recorded across multiple European capitals — training indoors at venues like KayaLab Climbing Center in Levent, this week was the first real outdoor test of a punishing summer training block.

What Happened on the Rock This Week

Sunday's qualifier drew 214 registered competitors to the forested hillsides above Beykoz's Polonezköy road, a venue that organisers from the Istanbul Dağcılık ve Kaya Tırmanışı Federasyonu have developed over the past three seasons into a credible outdoor competition site. The main wall — a 22-metre natural limestone face bolted to IFSC standards — hosted the lead discipline, while a purpose-built wooden structure erected on the flat ground below served the bouldering rounds. Entry fees were set at 350 Turkish lira for federation members and 600 lira for independents, unchanged from last year's rate despite broader cost-of-living pressures in the city.

The bouldering session Saturday produced the week's most dramatic moment: 19-year-old Emre Kaya from Ataşehir sent a V10 problem that had stopped every competitor at the 2025 edition of the same event. Kaya trains three days a week at Gravity Climbing Gym on Barbaros Bulvarı in Balmumcu and two days outdoors at the Anadolu Kavağı boulders near the northern tip of the Bosphorus — a spot that remains largely unknown outside Istanbul's inner climbing circle despite hosting some of the highest-quality sandstone problems within 40 kilometres of the city centre.

The Wider Picture for Istanbul's Adventure Sport Scene

Climbing is not the only discipline posting numbers this week. The Istanbul Extreme Sports Association reported that weekend sign-ups for its via ferrata programme at Yoros Kalesi — the Byzantine fortress ruins commanding the point where the Bosphorus meets the Black Sea — hit 87 participants across Saturday and Sunday, the highest two-day figure since the programme launched in April 2024. The route there, equipped with iron rungs and cable lines along a 340-metre ridge section, is graded D/TD on the continental scale and has become a gateway discipline for urban residents curious about vertical terrain but not yet committed to technical rock climbing.

Participation data compiled by the federation through June shows Istanbul now has roughly 11,400 registered outdoor climbers — a figure that has grown 34 percent since January 2023, driven partly by post-pandemic appetite for open-air activity and partly by a crop of new indoor gyms that have fed beginners into the outdoor scene. KayaLab in Levent, Gravity in Balmumcu, and a newer facility called Zirve Tırmanış in Üsküdar together account for the majority of that pipeline.

For anyone looking to follow the action or join the tail end of the qualifier series, the next event on the Istanbul calendar is a bouldering-only competition at Anadolu Kavağı on July 19. Pre-registration opens through the federation website on July 7 and is expected to close within 48 hours based on previous seasons. Athletes aiming for the Antalya nationals should note that the final ranking cutoff date is August 10 — leaving three more qualifying weekends after July 19 for anyone still chasing points.