Ankara is home to the Turkish Mountaineering Federation and to university mountaineering clubs that go back to the 1960s, but only a couple of its walls take walk-in visitors: Tragos Boulder & Outdoor, a bouldering gym in Çankaya, and Gölbaşı Municipality's 100. Yıl climbing hall, which has top-rope walls as well as bouldering. Most of the city's other walls belong to universities and clubs, and need a licence.
Photo: Tragos Boulder & Outdoor
Tragos Boulder & Outdoor, on Lizbon Caddesi in Ata Mahallesi, Çankaya, combines a bouldering gym with an outdoor-gear shop. Its angled walls are set with colourful holds and big volumes above deep matting. You don't need to book a day visit, friends can come in to watch, and there are changing rooms and showers, with shoes and chalk to hire. The gym plans to add roped sport-climbing areas later.
Gölbaşı Municipality's 100. Yıl ice-skating and climbing hall opened on 13 October 2023, the centenary of Ankara becoming the capital. Its 205 m² climbing room has steep bouldering walls and taller walls with top-rope anchors, and it's open to individual visitors on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 11:00 to 18:00 and at weekends from 09:00 to 18:00. The municipality announces its courses when registration opens.
Kısakaya, which opened in April 2015 and calls itself the city's first climbing gym, closed its gym in Yaşamkent on 4 July 2026 to move. In mid-October 2026 its website still said it would be back soon, without a new address, so check it has reopened before buying a lesson voucher. Base Life Club in Çayyolu has a tall roped wall for members of its fitness club, always climbed with an instructor.
At Tragos a single entry cost ₺550 in October 2026, or ₺450 for students, with ₺100 off on weekdays before 14:00. A ten-visit pass was ₺4,250, and a one-hour intro lesson with shoes and chalk ₺1,750. Four-week courses, with two one-hour sessions a week, run for adults and for children from age 5, in groups of four to six (₺9,500) or privately (₺12,500), and include a month of unlimited climbing.
Ankara has more competition and teaching walls than walk-in ones. The Turkish Mountaineering Federation (TDF), whose head office is in Beştepe, uses the Yenimahalle sports complex, with its lead, bouldering and speed walls, for national competitions and courses, and the 2026 Turkish Championships are held there from 14 to 21 November. The federation also runs the outdoor competition wall in Dikmen Vadisi, 14 metres high and 35 metres wide, which it renovated in spring 2025, and holds coaching courses at Altındağ's Ulubey Sporcu Fabrikası.
These walls are for licensed climbers, who use them through clubs. At Dikmen, officials can check licences and turn away anyone without one, and climbers must be supervised by a coach. Ankyra Doğa Sporları, a federation-registered club founded in 2021 that takes complete beginners, trained at Ulubey on Monday evenings and at Yenimahalle on Fridays in autumn 2026.
The universities have their own walls and long-running clubs. METU's mountaineering and winter sports club, DKSK, founded in 1963, trains on the wall in the university's Büyük Spor Salonu on weekday evenings. Bilkent's outdoor sports society, DOST, active since 1989, hosted the first inter-university sport-climbing competition on the campus's outdoor wall in May 2026. Hacettepe, Ankara University and the University of Health Sciences also have walls. All of them are for each university's own students and staff.
Ankara's main crag is Karakaya, 167 km from the city in Eskişehir province. Unusually for Turkey, it's granite: theTopo lists 168 sport routes, 75 trad routes and 92 boulder problems, most of them 10 to 20 metres high, and some of the newer sectors suit beginners. Climbers camp in an acacia grove five minutes from the rock. There are no services, and the nearest shops are in Kaymaz, 7 km away. Buses towards Eskişehir can drop you on the main road, about 3 km's walk from the camp.
Next door, the granite of Sivrihisar is kept free of bolts by agreement among climbers, for trad routes and bouldering, and Ankara's university clubs train there. Barek Mountain, near Keskin in Kırıkkale province and about 120 km from Ankara, has around 375 boulder problems on granite and andesite at about 1,500 metres. For longer trips, Ankara climbers go to the Ala Dağlar, Geyikbayırı and Olympos.
The national championships in lead, bouldering and speed run from 14 to 21 November 2026 at the Yenimahalle sports complex in Ankara, for climbers from 13 to seniors. Here's the schedule, who can enter and why the results matter for the national team.
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Turkey has two climbing systems: walk-in bouldering gyms that anyone can use, and club, university and state walls for licensed climbers. Here's how each works, what it costs and how visitors can climb.
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