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| KALY! |
Exceeding Expectations
Well we have just spent 6 weeks in climber’s
paradise!
Many, many people had told us we should go
to Kalymnos, it is amazing, the climbing is great, it is cheap (all climbers
like this), it is beautiful and the locals are friendly, plus many other
reasons.
When it comes to these kinds of
recommendations, you tend to believe them but always with a little pinch of
salt. Well Kalymnos needs no pinch of
salt - all of the above is true and more!
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| "Hey Tony"! One of the many very friendly and chatty locals |
Cath and I have had a magical time in
Kalymnos climbing some of the best limestone I have ever been on. There are
steep tufa-ridden enduro pitches, good technical face routes and even a few
multi pitches to throw into the mix. The grades are not complete holiday grades
but they are not sandbags either.
The locals have been wonderful and gone out of their way to be helpful. The food met all expectations and more, with fresh fish and beef stifado, mmmm
Kalymnos is in the Aegean sea just off the
coast of Turkey. In fact it is closer to turkey than to mainland Greece.
We arrived just after the climbing festival
at the end of October and the place was heaving with so many people, we were
glad we didn’t arrive any earlier. But as the weeks moved on the crowds quickly
reduced, and by the end of our trip it
almost a ghost town. By late November very few places were open and
there were very few climbers around. This meant we have had some of the most
popular crags to ourselves, which has been very nice. However during the last
couple of weeks there was an increase in rain. The storms have actually been
spectacular in nature with lots of lightning and thunder. Fortunately it was
easy to plan rest days around them so they have not had a big effect on us
climbing wise.
Our first couple of weeks here we needed to
find our feet again, and learn to climb through the mazes of tufas which
Kalymnos is famous for. Fortunately some ‘almost locals’ Lee and Sam (actually
Queenslanders, but don’t hold that against them) helped point us in the right
direction. Unfortunately they left after a couple of days, as their trip in
Kalymnos was finishing as ours was starting.
The next three weeks we spent climbing with
three of the craziest girls, Lucy (from Sydney), Tracey (from Queensland) and
Selene (from Canada). This led to many fun adventures and many goat noise impersonations
and laughs. Including a very fun trip to Telendos, with more shenanigans than
actual climbing.
Shenanigans - the video by Tracey Hua
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| This was the tone of our Telendos day, well actually most days with these 4 Seleen, Tracey, Lucy and Cath |
Just as Lucy, Tracey, and Selene left we
bumped into Chris who we had spent some time with in Mexico, Potrero Chico, about
4 years ago. We were lucky enough to be able to spend lots of time with Chris,
his wife Heather and some friends of theirs from Colarado Bruce, Michelle and
their daughter Uli.
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| Cath on Gladiator 7b(25) |
Both Cath and my climbing has gone very
well, with Cath ticking a 7b(25) Gladiator, the first 25 for her ‘post-operations’
and actually since we were in Mexico, and flashed her first couple of 7a+(24).
I have managed my first ever 7c(27) flash on the very steep Priapos in the
Grande Grotta.
Priapos is the ancient god of the
supernaturally erect penis and with the amount of stalactites on this route you
can understand why it was named after this god!
Priapos (the climb) was an amazing three-dimensional
fight through a very steep tufa filled limestone cave. It overhangs
approximately 15+m in 35m. Fortunately it has many rests by wrapping yourself
around various stalactites, including some you can totally sit down on.
The very end of this route was almost my
undoing, I was extremely pumped and squeezing in any marginal knee bar rest I
could find to make it to the anchors.
After clipping the chains I was almost
delirious while being lowered
This was definitely one of my best Flashes/onsights
(draws were on), it is certainly my hardest.
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| The mighty Priapos 7c(27) with Telendos in the background |
Also while in Kalymnos I managed 3 other 7c’s:
Kaly diva at (not so secret) Secret Garden.
Very technical climbing to a pumpy finish.
Lactic Shock at Ivory Tower, which was
super fun, starting with a technical skinny tufa section and into big moves
between pockets.
And lastly Aegialias, which is also in the Grande
Grotta and is one of the most photographed routes in the world and it is worth
it! This one definitely felt the hardest of the 4. The send was a fight of
fights, I was tired when I started and didn’t climb very smoothly at all. I
some how managed to struggle to each kneebar rest. Then after clipping the last
draw before the anchor I totally blanked on what to do, managed to get back to
a very poor rest of a 1000 positions (none of them good) and get just enough
back to go for the anchors. With a lot of Sharma Screaming I managed the clip!
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| Pinky, grateful for some food. |
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| Cats of Kalymnos |
Over our last couple of weeks in Kalymnos
Cath rescued a very young kitten, only a few days old from behind a dumpster,
where he had been abandonded.
This Kitten we named Pinky, and he would
not have survived another night outside.
Fortunately Heather is a vet and checked
him over and gave us advice on how to look after him, including on how to teach
him to poo! (Don’t ask!!!!).
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| Pink out and about. |
Over our last weeks Pinky came everywhere
with us including the crag, carried in a little back pack with hot water bottle
as he needed to be fed every few hours with a bottle.
Fortunately for Pinky when we left Heather
and Chris took over the looking after and Bruce, Michelle and Uli will take up
the reigns after that until about next may, which will give him a very good
start to life
On the second last Thursday of November our
American friends told us it was thanksgiving so we planned to head around to
Bruce and Michelle’s for dinner.
It wasn’t until it was all planned etc.
that they discovered that Thanksgiving is the last Thursday in November. So we
just changed the name to Pranksgiving and had an enormous feast anyway. As well
as a now traditional treasure hunt!
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| Pranksgiving |
The next Thursday (the last in the month)
was also our last night in Kalymnos and we got to experience our first actual thanksgiving,
which was an amazing night much like Pranksgiving, full of food and wine, but
mostly it was full of laughter with old and new friends, plus another treasure
hunt. And it was the perfect way to finish this leg of our trip.
All in all Kalymnos more than lived up to
the hype. It is a wonderful place to visit as a climber and we hope to return
sooner rather than later.
Coming Soon!
Kalymnos - The Invasion!
by Catherine de VausA little video which perfectly demonstrates life on Kalymnos
For more photos please visit:
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| Sunset view |
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