A village, not a pasture
The only yayla in the area with its own headman, and its stone-and-timber houses are lived in rather than staged.
Kadir KARA — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kadir KARA — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kadir KARA — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kadir KARA — CC BY-SA 4.0
Elevit is not a summer pasture but a real village: the only yayla in this corner of the Kaçkar with its own elected headman and an entry in the official registers, sitting at roughly 1,880 metres where stone-and-timber houses scatter across a green slope with peaks still holding patches of snow standing guard behind them into July. There is no sign, no gate, no ticket. What you pay for is the road, and what you get at the end of it is a scene nobody arranged for visitors. Getting there is half the point. From Rize you follow the coast east to Ardeşen, then climb the Fırtına valley through Çamlıhemşin and past Zil Castle to the village of Çat, about 94 kilometres from Rize. Beyond Çat it is another seven kilometres of narrow mountain road, sealed in parts and steep and rough in others, and most people leave it to a proper 4x4 or one of the organised jeep tours out of Ayder or Çamlıhemşin, not least because many of those tours fold Çat and Elevit into the same day as the Pokut and Gito plateaus. Budget around a hundred kilometres and two and a half to three hours from Rize. Walkers can leave the car at Çat and hike up in about three hours. In the village itself there is nothing to do in the guidebook sense: wander between the houses, take tea at one of the few homes turned into simple pensions or at the café, buy a jar of mountain honey, and sit facing the mountain. The season is short, June to October, with snow closing the road for the rest of the year. August is the liveliest month, with the plateau celebrations and their famous horon dances, but it is also the busiest with jeeps and emigrant families home for the summer, and even at the height of a Gulf summer the air up here is cool enough to want a jacket. For families: enjoyable if everyone can stomach three hours of switchbacks each way; small children may find the jolting tedious, and a pushchair is useless on the unpaved ground. If you want a beautiful plateau that is closer and easier, Pokut or Ayder itself will serve. Elevit is for travellers who want to see how a working village lives at the edge of the Kaçkar before the trails climb on to the high lakes.
The only yayla in the area with its own headman, and its stone-and-timber houses are lived in rather than staged.
Seven kilometres of narrow mountain road beyond Çat make the approach an adventure, usually bundled with Pokut and Gito in one day.
Horon dances and the plateau celebrations in August bring life and crowds in equal measure; September is far quieter.
Elevit village, beyond the Çat gorge, Çamlıhemşin district, Rize
As far as Çat the road is paved and no trouble. The last seven kilometres are a narrow mountain road whose state varies from season to season: a careful driver on a dry day may manage it, but the safe course is to ask in Çamlıhemşin before committing, hire a 4x4, or simplest of all book a jeep tour from Ayder that bundles Elevit with Pokut and Gito.
Pokut is closer, easier and has the more famous sea-of-clouds view, making it the safer pick with small children. Elevit earns its place if you want a living village and the Kaçkar up close, and the organised tour takes in both in one day for those who can handle the road.
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