Kalymnos Thanksgiving

Trip Report

Last year, I spent a month climbing in Leonidio, Greece. A climbing area nestled in a dreamy farming village in the central Peloponnese region. My partner during that time spoke highly of Kalymnos of all the tufas, knee bars and high quality routes. This thanksgiving season, I recruited my trusty climbing travel partner AJ and another friend Thomas to join me for two weeks on the island of Kalymnos. 



For those unfamiliar, Kalymnos is the premier sport climbing destination in Europe. It’s a small island close to Turkey, where goats and cats outnumber humans who have been there since ancient times. It has over 4000 routes from 5.9 all the way to 5.14s, friendly bolting, perma draw anchors and a great guidebook. Compared to Chulilla Spain and Leonidio Greece, this place is the best purely in climbing. It has shaded crags, secluded crags, rain sheltered crags and everything from techy limestone to mega roofs. For me the main attractions were the over hanging tufas which led instead to creative 3d climbing involving many knee bars, underclings and drop knees.

AJ climbing the iconic DNA (11d) at Grande Grotta

I will admit the barrier to entry is high coming over from the US. It took us nearly 2 days to get there having to take 3 planes and 1 ferry. During high season there are direct flights to the island which can save some time. But once you’re on the island most crags will be within a 20 minute walk and drives are no longer than 20 minutes with many crags within walking distance from the main climbing town.

World class climbing right at our doorstep

We started our climbing with some easy tufa climbing at Panorama right next to Grande Grotto. As enticing as it was to want to hope onto the overhanding tufa forest, given our long stay, we didn’t want to burn ourself out and warmed up to the limestone by climbing a more vertical wall nearby. I find limestone to be more varied than our basalt or granite, with textures ranging from sharp broccoli holds, slippery flow stone, tufa blobs, tufa snakes, pockets and rain drops. Once you learn to read the rock, it was really fun to just onsight route after route.

Wall with a lot of tufa "blobs"

On our second day, I met up with my friend I made in Laos who also happened to be here in Kalymnos. It was great to catch up and get more beta on food and crags. He also traveled all over the world climbing and had great recommendations for climbing in Columbia and Brazil. It’s also fairly easy for climbers without partners can easily find people to climb with given its popularity.

Projecting Andromeda (5.13a) at the Odyssey

One of my goals for this trip was to redpoint 5.13a and also try a 8a which is 5.13b in the French grading system. My candidate 13a route was called “Andromeda” a 20m route that involved a fun initial knee bar section followed by a boulder problem topped off with a single tufa finish. It had plenty of rests with hard climbing in between which was more my style versus some endurance based problem. I got the problem on my 6th attempt but I realized on short trips like these when I sent the project I wasn’t happy because I sent but rather because I could climb other things. 




Knee bars are the only way to get rests on really overhanging routes (Fun de Chichunne 5.13b)

To tick an 8a I jumped on Fun de Chichunne at Grande Grotta. It’s the route that’s in the deepest part of the cave and becomes almost horizontal in the middle. I bailed then as I did not have the technique to climb at such angles. Failures like these are great sources of motivation to know what I need to work on before coming back.

Thomas sitting on the tufa in the middle

It was great to watch AJ and Thomas figure out knee baring, climbing tufa blobs and finding the joys of 3d limestone climbing. I realized we need to vary the angles at which we climbing at (not just climb overhangs all the time) as even with one rest day, all of our forearms were really tight.

A secluded beach with goats

For rest day activities, we visited a cave with really cool stalactites, a castle from the Byzantine period, swam in the warm Mediterranean, and hiked to the top of the island. If you visit in the October, there are more tourist options like local cruises, snorkeling and relaxing at the beach.


Lastly while the while has a lot of moderates, the majority of the fun climbing (tufas, steep pockets, other limestone features) were at the 6c+ level and above which is around 5.11. However I think that training in the gym carries a lot more mileage on limestone than something more technical like granite. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of good climbs in the 5.10 ranges and we saw plenty of people climbing at the range but it will be more on the grey limestone that has sharp holds. Most of the stellar routes I climbed were around the 7a range and given the long travel time to get to here, that would be the level I would want to be comfortable at to get the most out of Kalymnos.

Saying goodbye to Kalymnos, I will be back soon!

Fun routes I recommend are:

Totanhansel 5.11b, Ghost Kitchen: climb between two tufas, utilizing drop knees to bump hands.
Melodrama 5.11c, Secret Gardens: powerful climbing on tufa blobs leads into a pumpy single tufa. 
Kerveros 5.11d, Spartacus Wall: route with lots of pockets that are good in one direction, making you think about the sequence in which you climb
Kalypige 5.11d, Panorama Wall: fun tufa pipeline climb.
Daphne 5.12b, Odyssey: techy face climbing with varied moves from gastons to lay backing.
Aegialis 5.12d, Grande Grotta: route the requires creative use of knee bars to seige your way up
Andromeda 5.13a, Odyssey: great intro to single tufa climbing

Map