Walking route planning process in the case of Kaçkar Mountains National Park and its close surroundings

The demands and needs of people, who have changed with economic, social and technological developments throughout history, have also been reflected in travel cultures in the 21st century. Changing demands have directed tourism from mass movement to alternative options. The importance of establishing the protection-use balance of these protected areas has been understood as the orientation of the people towards these protected areas that are rich in natural and cultural resource values and that allow alternative tourism types to be made. Planned hiking trails in protected areas guide visitors to suitable routes safely, giving for accessing to nature. In this study, the identification of the hiking routes determined in the Kaçkar Mountains National Park and its immediate surroundings and their planning within a certain method are discussed. For this purpose, first of all, a natural and cultural inventory of the area was drawn up, and then 10 routes where the planning process would be followed were selected with via expert opinions. The planning process of these routes was completed with interviews with experts, field studies, digitization of the inventory and routes, determination of difficulty levels, determination of the themes of the routes and development of management proposals. As a result of the field studies and analyzes, information about the location, length, total ascent, walking time, experience, activity opportunities and difficulty levels of these routes were obtained and these routes were divided into 6 thematic groups (timeless valley, ice age road, caravan route, wild road, victory climbing road, cloud sea road) was constructed by separating. When the routes were examined, it was revealed that 4 of the 10 routes determined had low difficulty, 4 had medium difficulty, and 2 had high difficulty. As a result of the study, the experience information, safety problems and management deficiencies of the routes were determined, maps were prepared for the walking routes and suggestions were developed for the management of these routes.