Uludağ

“Great Mountain”

Other names: Bithynian Olympos, Mysian Olympos, Keşiş Dağı

Uludağ. The Great Mountain. The Olympos of Bithynia. No matter what you call it, the truly great thing about this 2543m-high peak is that it’s mere hours away from central İstanbul and yet boasts some of the finest winter sports conditions in the country. What’s more Uludağ sits on the doorstep of central Bursa which means that you can come here for the skiing, yet still be able to take advantage of the city nightlife and other attractions too.

Since 1961 Uludağ has been a national park covering some 12,500 hectares encompassing nine glacial lakes. The mountain is the highest peak in north-western Anatolia and more than 70% of the slopes are still said to be forested. The park is home to more than 700 different types of plant and many species of birds and mammals including brown bears (during the Covid pandemic video circulated of an inquisitive bear ambling around an unused cable-car station).

Backstory

Long before skiers set their sights on Uludağ this was a much-venerated mountain associated with the gods of antiquity. Strabo described it as the Bithynian or Mysian Olympos since it straddled the borders of those two provinces. In some tellings of the story, Zeus and the Greek gods looked down from this Olympos as the Trojan War waged miles away to the west.

Sanctity continued to cloak the mountain into Byzantine times and led to the building of several small monasteries and hermitages on the slopes from the 8th century to the 14th century. As a result it began to be called Keşiş Dağı, the Mountain of the Monks. But although it has been suggested that there many have been as many as 150 monasteries in total, a study carried out in the 1930s only found the remains of about 50. Four of them – Saccudion, Cathares, Libiana and Mesolympe – have been identified as not far from the cable-car stop at Kadıyayla. The sites of only five of the monasteries have been identified with any certainty.

It has been suggested that some of these structures were later converted into dervish tekkes. However, in his description of a camping excursion up the mountain in the 17th-century, travel writer, Evliya Çelebi, didn’t mention either monasteries or tekkes – although he did mention 100,000 sheep said to be descended from those owned by Osman Gazi.

In 1925 it was given its current prestigious name.

Skiing

The ski season runs from mid-December through to late March, with the best snow usually in January. During these months you can expect the resort to be heaving with visitors, most of them Turkish but with an increasing throughput of foreigners too.

At weekends queues for the five chair lifts and seven T-lifts lengthen, prices soar, and you’ll be struggling for a seat in the smaller cafes, but the lively atmosphere will more than make up for discovering that, with the exception of the Grand Yazıcı and Ergün, most of the hotels are built of concrete and pay not even lip service to the surrounding national park. Mid-week the hotels should have more rooms available and will drop their prices accordingly.

Nothing in your wardrobe fit for hitting the ski slopes? Never fear – everything you need can be hired or bought at the cluster of ski shops near the hotels.

The resort’s westerly position means that it can be very cloudy, so be sure to check the forecasts before setting out (www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Uludag). In high winds even the new cable-car operation can occasionally be halted.

Walking

While Uludağ is best known as a ski resort, there’s something to stop you taking the teleferik as far as it goes and then striking out for a walk amid the pines. Two of the most popular walking routes are from Sarıalan to Çobankaya and from Volfram to the lakes although the paths are not marked.

Sleeping

The hotels on Uludağ have the obvious advantage of proximity to the ski slopes and of being geared to the needs of skiers. On the other hand staying in them can be costly and you’ll probably be obliged to take full-board whether you want to or not.

The alternative is to stay down in Bursa and travel up to the slopes during the day.

Dolmuşes to the Teleferik leave from an underground terminal behind the Heykel (monument) at the eastern end of Atatürk Caddesi. In summer it operates from 10am to 6pm.