By Mountain Hardwear Athlete Julia Niles
Kalymnos is pretty cool I guess. If you like the warm Mediterranean ocean and climbing on huge jugs in overhanging terrain. The living is easy when you are not busy hanging off of stalactites. This simple town of Massouri could not be a more pleasant basecamp.
Sunbathing in Kalymnos Greece | Photo by James Q Martin
That said, there are some inconveniences. There are killer mosquitoes that barely make a noise and bite! It causes skin to well up into poison ivy like blisters that last up to a week. (Apparently they do not have the same effect on everyone.) And the goats. Tim almost got rammed early in the trip. He slapped it on the ass as he was fed up with the raunchy smell and threat to human food. This, we learned, is not the proper tactic. The goat turned, bowed his head, and charged Tim's gonads. Luckily, Tim's cat-like reflexes allowed him to grab the projected horns and show the cud chewing beast who's boss. But, it was a good lesson. From then on, we simply humored the goats with the odd banana peel and stayed away. And then there's the weather. Apparently this November has been the coldest in eight years. Poor Sean takes his first vacation in a year only to visit an island across the seas with only a little less rain than our home in Squamish.
Downpours while on vacation. | Photo by Julia Niles
Now this may sound like complaining but as Dawn declared early on in our adventure, "Anyone who complains here is a jerk." Therefore, from then on nobody complained. We simply "stated facts."
I would say that the crescendo of our trip came three days ago. When I on-sighted Ivi (7b), and thus inflated, hopped on the epic Priapus (7c). Sadly, this was an epic journey on a fabulous route, with only one problem - me. Somehow, Gravity chose this moment to flex its (very large) muscle, and I morphed from monkey into bird- flight can be just as fun as climbing sometimes. But my timing sucked. After Sean rescued me by putting the rope up there, I got to top-rope it. It felt easy! Not only because of his merciful belaying technique: it's called "keep tension at all times because its getting dark and my girlfriend's crazy."
Climbing at dusk. | Photo by James Q Martin
We awoke the next morning with all sorts of battle scars. As I've been saying, this island is brutal! The climbing since then has been a bit rough. I tried a route I onsighted easily at the beginning of the trip and barely got up it. Somehow that Priapus gravity stuck. Or maybe it is all the cheese. The Greek eat a lot of cheese. A couple of our climber friends don't eat cheese. This is not acceptable to the locals. You have to specify "please no cheese, and no feta" because they don't consider feta to be cheese. This statement is about fifty percent effective when ordering food.
However, I must say that it is hard to ignore the glaring fact that this place will make a sport climber out of anybody. Even Dawn, Sean, and I, three cold-weather, alpine loving fools, are beginning to rethink our specialty. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to just sport climb. Our destinations would shift from The Waddington, Patagonia, Pakistan, and Alaska to Sardinia, Mallorca, and at the extreme, Turkey. It might be a good prescription for health. The steep climbing feels like the best cross training ever. Instead of making the crimps smaller as you increase the grade, here the routes simply get steeper. My whole body gets pumped.
Difficult routes. | Photo by James Q Martin
Despite all the hardship, I truly believe that we might have become better people and maybe even better climbers upon returning home. But if not, at least we'll be fat and happy!
