Written by James Lawson (Webmaster) & Alistair Brash (President)
Day 1 (15th September):
Flew out to Kos from Gatwick after a 3am start, Lizzie is woken up by a phonecall 10 mins before the Easybus leaves but somehow makes it in time. From Kos we take taxis to the port, a ferry to Kalymnos and then a bus to Massouri. Eventually we arrive late on in the afternoon at Babis bar in Massouri on Kalymnos, our accommodation for the trip. As it was getting dark when we arrived at the bar we decided to go for a swim in the pool and eat rather than attempting to climb.
Day 2:
We fafffed with gear/breakfast till 10:15 then headed out to the Poets sector, the closest to Babis bar. Kip managed to forget his shoes and attempted to Alistair’s size “too small” downturned bouldering shoes to much hilarity. Kip flashed his first 6a (after going back for shoes) and Ruth did her first sport lead (5a). Dac lead a 5a that she found “nice” called Pindaros. The bolts on “Sevasti” (7b) were found to be in silly places which was a shame as the bottom of the route involved wrestling with an incredible tufa feature. Climbing halted at mid afternoon due to climbing not been possible in the sun, we decided to wake up early the next day to climb for a greater amount of the day. At dinner that night Lizzie claimed that she could taste the fennel (despite the herbs not been fennel) and the phrase “getting involved with” was deemed acceptable.
Day 3:
Up at 5:30AM! (It was still dark) to beat the daystar at its own game. Breakfast of two eggs and bread is already getting slightly sickening. Kip took a big fall while clipping on a 6b+ and decided to sac the rest of the day off. Cheehan found a mobile phone charger and learnt how to belay. Johan found that the phrase “just bisioning around” annoyed Alistair. Ruth tried a 5b but weighted the rope due to deficiencies in route finding.
Day 4:
Lisa Beats Kip’s tour fall distance record by falling from the last move of the 40m route Trella (7a). Johan managed to climb 9 routes in a day with Dak and kip managing 8 as part of a group of 3. Alistair flashes Trella for his first 7a flash (climbed without falls on first attempt). We had lentils for tea, they were tasty.
Day 5:
Babi took the cool kids to a crag that had all day climbing due to the presence of a north face. Meanwhile red point club (Lisa, Alistair, Cheehan) had a rest day. Johan and Johnny both flashed 6c. Kip learnt how to tie in with a bowline knot which is quicker to undo than a figure 8. Dak tried a 6c for the first time.
Day 6:
Rest day for everyone who wasn’t in red point club. Red point club went and red pointed some more. Everyone else went and hired scooters and became a crazy motorbike gang for the day which involved going to the supermarket for cheap food and 1.93euro/1.5L wine and riding the mountain road to Vathy and Pothia. This was the best day of Fresher’s life. Cheehan flashes 7b+ despite having never lead outside before the trip! And Lisa almost redpoints 7a+. Kip doesn’t hold up well on the paint stripper wine (methanol content?!) and falls asleep early.
Day 7:
Fresher and Kip embarked on the first multipitch of the tour at the ‘School’ sector of Kalymnos. ‘Platon’ a five pitch route: 4c, 5a, 5b, 5c, 4b. This was Kip’s first multipitch climb but as the first two pitches were easy it was decided to simul-climb (leader and second moving together) them for speed. This was extremely fun and the first two and a half pitches were dispatched in between 5 and 10 minutes, thus showing the speed advantage this style of climbing has. As the climbing became harder and more technical towards the end of the 5b pitch they switched to belayed climbing for the end of this pitch and the following pitch with Fresher leading. The final pitch was lead by Kip with big run outs (big fall potential due to spaced protection) presumably because the first ascensionist had run out of bolts. The view from the top of the ridge line the climb went up was pretty spectacular, unfortunately for weight saving we brought no camera. The whole climb took a surprisingly brief period of time; been dispatched including abseil decent before 1:30pm!
Alistair dispatched the route Zorba Le Gros on his 2nd attempt for his first route at the 7b grade. Lisa falls right from the end of Polipitis (7a+), plans to come back later in the trip to finish it off.
Day 8:
More climbing at Poets for most people, Alistair, Cheehan, Jonny & Lizzie head to the impressive cave of Spartacus where amazing routes and shade until 6pm are found. Cheehan starts work on Daniboy which at the grade of 8a is harder than any IC student in recent memory has climbed. Alistair picks the classic line of Spartacus, both routes require painfully jamming your knee in to get a hands-off rest, plans are made for one of Babis’ hand-towels to become a crucial knee-pad. Jonny tries Magnetus, a very short and powerful route at the 7c grade. Lizzie starts attempting climbs at the 6c grade. All four are enthusiastic to return another day to complete their projects. Chris & Lisa head back to Polipitis, get close but again not quite close enough.
Day 9:
Everyone takes a rest day, Fresher sets off determined to hire a boat. Turns out nobody on Kalymnos is stupid enough to hire Fresher a boat. Much larking around in the swimming pool happens and not a lot else.
Day 10:
Psyched after successfully imitating turbo Germans; Fresher and Kip embarked on their second multipitch climb of the tour. This time on the small island of Telendos (or Telly’d as it became known) with the objective of climbing a 6b+ overhanging “offwidth” (off width cracks are named as such because they don’t easily fit human body parts and so lead to a particularly physical form of climbing).
Figure 7 - Telendos as seen from Kalymnos
The day started at noon with catching the ferry to Telendos due to the climb being north-easterly facing. Upon leaving the town on Telendos a dog started to follow us. This dog obviously used to climbers going to the closer crags giving it food proceeded to follow us over very broken terrain for over an hour and a half to our climb despite our best efforts to turn it back.
Kip lead the first 6a+ pitch of crimpy Telendos limestone which had a nice unprotected bushy muddy sloping ledge at the top. Fresher, been the expert in all things disgusting then attempted the 6b+ “offwidth” pitch which turned out to be more of a fist/hand jamming crack. The inside of the crack was made of fossilised shells that hurt a lot. After about 4hrs of pain the “offwidth” pitch was dispatched. The delay was primarily due to it been impossible to second with a backpack and having to prussic up a fixed line instead.
Figure 8 - The notorious offwidth
Resting at the top of the 2nd pitch the decision was made to abseil off the climb due to the encroaching darkness and the “meat” of the climb having been dispatched. In the twilight at the bottom we found the dog now very dehydrated and so we shared some of our water with it.
What followed was 3hrs of stumbling through the dark trying to find our way back to the town but always finding ourselves above a cliff line with an increasingly distressed dog while getting very dehydrated. Eventually unable to find a way down from the cliff line we abseiled off a sturdy bush to a low angled scree slope which lead to the shore line path to town. Unfortunately the attempts to save the dog by making a sling harness for it such that we could take it on the abseil were unsuccessful (kept wriggling out). So we feared as the dog was scrabbling around in a dangerous position (top of a loose cliff) it would die. However just as we had given the dog up as lost it came bounding down the slope towards us, obviously it knew the decent and hadn’t told us. We brought the dog back to its owner and endeavoured to explain just how lucky a dog it was.
While this madness went down Johan managed 11 routes in a day on Castalia (good when each day only has 6hrs of climbing time).
Back in the realm of the sane, Alistair successfully redpointed Spartacus for his first 7b+ route, the hand-towel taped to the knee making all the difference. Cheehan fell from near the end of Daniboy and Jonny was shot down by Magnetus but managed to climb a neighbouring 7b. Chris and Lisa both managed to redpoint Polipitis for their first 7a+ routes.
Day 12:
There were sufficient funds for all of us to have all you can eat BBQ, as a vegetarian Kip decided to spend his money on a BIG pizza instead. Certain members hit the all you can drink wine pretty hard and after a moonlit trip to the beach, are unable to find their own beds so instead settle for sharing.
Day 13:
Cheehan successfully redpointed Daniboy (8a), Johnny and Johan followed suit with Magnetus (7c) and a 7b getting redpointed respectively. All very good achievements!
Day 14:
All of us decided to have a rest day and went to Telendos where we hired sea kayaks and went to a small uninhabited island with a church on (about 2km away). We then had a tasty cheap lunch at a restaurant on Telendos. For afternoon entertainment most of us swam the 1km from Telendos to Kalymnos, for many of us our first open water swim. Fresher paddled the dinghy from the swimming pool at Babis Bar using a slippery when wet sign, a true act of heroism that required reinflation at the half-way mark. Celebratory ice-cream and beer were consumed.
Day 15 (September 29th):
Return to London via two buses, a ferry and Easyjet. Minor drama with luggage not showing up in time for Easybus, however Easybus was late so all is well. London is grey, rainy and miserable and generally inferior to Kalymnos in every respect. Still, Kalymnos has left a big impression upon all of us and we cannot wait to return in the future.
Full List of Attendees:
- Alistair Brash
- Ruth Lawson
- James Lawson
- Lisa Alhadeff
- Johan Gausden
- Dakshina Scott
- Jonathan Hazell
- Matt Pusey
- Ed Stott
- Lizzie Wilkins
- Sarah Woodrow
- Chris Hunt
- Cheehan Weereratne
- Elliot Carrington
- Jonathan Bull
All of the above are full-time IC students and members of ICMC. The tour budget projected 15 attendees with 14 being IC students, however the alumni member dropped out, the result was that 15 IC students attended the tour.
Financial Breakdown:
The CSB awarded this tour £463.00 of subsidy which will be split equally between all attendees to cover travel expenditure when received. The tour broke even. There was not a fixed ticket price as not everyone came for the duration of the tour, however individual prices were calculated based on the cost of food + accommodation for the number of nights the attendees were present. The cost of the tour for a single attendee for the full two weeks once subsidy is received was £400.
Difficulties / Objectives:
The tour originally intended to run to Sardinia, however owing to a lack of eligible hire car drivers, the destination was changed to Kalymnos as it was possible to walk to the climbing from our accommodation. Changing the destination actually presented very few problems and the new destination was able to fulfil all of the tour objectives. The cost of the flights increased however this was offset by the money saved from not needing to hire cars. This also meant that our subsidy allocation was still valid, the change in destination was cleared with the DPCS well before departure.
Many new skills were learnt from simul-climbing to new tie-in knots and even just better mental & physical tactics for attempting a hard route. Not a single member came away from the trip without increasing the level at which they climbed. Several members lead climbed outdoors for the first time, this is a major milestone in anyone’s personal climbing development. The well-protected and enjoyable routes played a major role in this
