Mount Tahtalı Cable Car

The doors open at the top and the wind arrives first. It is cold, dry and constant, and it pulls at your sleeves. Down at the coast people are swimming. Up here the rock is bare, pale grey and cracked, with low cushions of thorny plants growing in the gaps. Sound behaves strangely — voices carry, then vanish. Your ears may still be adjusting from the ride. Take a moment before you walk to the edge of the platform.

The cable car runs from a base station in the hills above Tekirova, near Kemer, up to the summit of Mount Tahtalı. Cabins leave regularly through the day and carry a few dozen people at a time. The ride takes about ten minutes. It is worth standing at the rear window rather than the front. You watch the coastline unfold behind you, and the beaches shrink into thin white lines while the sea widens.

Tahtalı rises to roughly 2,365 metres, and it does so almost straight out of the Mediterranean. That is what makes the view unusual. In most mountain ranges you climb through foothills before you reach height. Here the sea is only a few kilometres away in a horizontal line, and about two and a half kilometres below you in a vertical one. On clear days the coast reads like a map spread out beneath the cabin.

The mountain has two names, and both are old. In Turkish it is Tahtalı. In antiquity this peak was called Olympos, and the ancient city on the coast below took its name from it. Greek geography used the name Olympos for several mountains, not only the famous one in northern Greece. This was the Lycian one — Lycia being the ancient region that covered this coast. Locals still use both names in conversation.

Dress for a different season. The temperature at the summit is normally many degrees lower than at sea level, and the wind makes it feel colder still. Snow lies here well into spring, and patches can survive in shaded hollows much longer. People arrive from the beach in shorts and sandals every single day, then buy a fleece at the top. Bring a jacket, and bring sunglasses — the light off pale rock and snow is strong.

From the viewing terraces you can pick out a long stretch of coast. To the north lie the bay of Antalya and the city itself, with the Taurus mountains curving behind it. Below, the resort strip of Kemer sits against the water. Southward the shoreline breaks into wooded points and small bays. On a clear morning you can trace the low green peninsula of ancient Phaselis and, further along, the valley that holds Çıralı.

Look at the towers and cable on your way up. Building a lift on this ridge meant carrying steel and concrete onto steep, unstable limestone, and designing for high winds and winter ice. The system opened in the 2000s and was assembled with European ropeway technology. Long spans between towers reduce the number of foundations needed on the worst ground. That is why some sections of the ride feel very quiet, with nothing beneath you for a long stretch.

Watch for paragliders. The summit is a launch point, and pilots ride the air currents down toward the coast. On calm afternoons you may see several canopies below the terrace, turning in slow circles as they lose height. Tandem flights operate in season, weather permitting. Even if you have no intention of jumping off a mountain, it is worth standing near the launch area to see how quickly they drop away and how small they become.

Walkers reach this summit the hard way as well. The Lycian Way, a long-distance route that runs along this coast, passes through the country below the peak, and a branch climbs to the top. Some hikers start before dawn to reach the summit at sunrise. If you meet people arriving on foot at the terrace, they will have been walking for many hours. The cable car and the footpath meet at exactly the same view.

The ride crosses several bands of vegetation in ten minutes. Near the base there are pines and warm-climate scrub. Higher up the trees thin out and cedars and junipers appear, shaped by wind. Above them the ground becomes bare karst — limestone worn into ridges, hollows and sharp edges by rain over a very long period. Rain sinks straight into this rock rather than running off it, which is why you will see no streams up here.

A few practical notes. The lift closes in high wind, so check conditions before you drive out, and be ready for a change of plan. Buy tickets in advance in high season if you can. There is a café and shop at the summit, and toilets at both stations. Sunset trips are popular and need booking. Keep your ticket safe, and note the time of the last cabin down before you wander off along the ridge.

Walk to the quieter side of the terrace before you go back down. Turn away from the coast and look inland at the mountains behind you — row after row of grey ridges, most of them without roads. The sea gets all the attention on this coast, but that empty country is the larger half of the picture. Feel how cold the wind is on your hands. Then take one last look at the water, and get in the cabin.