It’s hard to believe that in such a densely populated country, it is still possible to find places where there are no humans. We didn’t see anyone during the five days we were in the Torasan group of the eastern Aladağlar. The only traces were cairns, a couple of pitons, and old descent slings.

Before our trip, we understood there were two routes on the northeast face of Vayvay Mountain (ca 3,600m): Nessuno (470m, 8a+, Giupponi-Larcher, 2012), located on the far left side, and the Ceschia-Perotti (1986), which weaves up the center of the wall. My partners Vitaly Todorenko, Egor Tsvetkov and I examined the wall with binoculars and saw what looked to be a solid new line.

We approached the face on August 1 and climbed the first pitch, fixing it for next morning. The next day, we jugged our rope and climbed eight more pitches (sending the crux 7a pitch in the dark). We fixed a line and descended to a big ledge to spend the night. The next morning we topped out on the ridge. We decided to skip three or four hours of ridge climbing to reach the summit and instead made one 60m rappel and then headed west and then north to Vayvay Pass. We descended a couloir and talus back east to reach our base camp.

Our route follows a natural line, but some sections required blade or beak pitons; we placed two bolts on the route. We named the route Sessizlik (“Silence,” 500m, 7a) because, for all three of us, the silence of this place was very impactful. [Editor’s Note: In 1997, Turkish climbers Doğan Palut and Emre Altoparlak found a new start to the 1986 Italian route, angling in from the left and then climbing more directly in the middle (TD+). The 2021 ascent followed the Turkish line through the start and middle of the face, and then climbed independently to the top (about five or six new pitches) to the right of earlier ascents.]

— Misha Utkin, Ukraine