Climbing in Greece in Summer 2009

Racking up in the Zode
Originally uploaded by slampoud

A belated post on what we climbed during last year's trip to Greece.

The trip basically had two parts. In the first part we went to Kalamitsi, a beach in Chalkidiki where my parents have a tiny cabin. I figured, since the rock there is granite, we should be able to climb, or at least boulder some. But what I discovered was that the quality of the rock wasn't nearly as good as I remembered, and the salt and sand surrounding it didn't make things too easy either.

While Ben and I spent a couple days in Kalamitsi, my parents visited their boat, which they moor in Porto Koufo. I really wanted to talk them into taking us to Kartalia, the promontory at the tip of Sithonia, where I had heard there was some steep limestone climbing. It's one of my favorite places in the world, and I wanted to show it to Ben, so that, even if we couldn't figure out how to approach the climbs, it wouldn't be a waste of time. But there was quite a bit of wind, and we never went.

Instead, we noticed that the west side of the entrance to Porto Koufo is itself a steep limestone wall. We took the zodiac out and did some deep water soloing there for a couple days. We found a couple bolted routes, but they were heading into a chimney that was absolutely covered in batshit. Finally we decided that we thought we could see a nice trad line up the wall. We loaded up the zode, I rowed our asses all the way out, we anchored the zode with a hex (really!) and Ben led off. When he got maybe 15 or 20 feet up he realized things were a lot more broken than they looked from below, so he bailed. I rowed our asses back in.

Stefani and the Kakkalos refuge
Originally uploaded by slampoud

After that it was time to hit the mountains. We humped the ropes and rack, but thankfully no camping gear, to the Kakalos refuge, which is the main climbers' refuge on the Oropedio Mouson. We went up Anathema, which is a slightly steeper route than the alternative, and it was a bitch! Of course, in my current condition I couldn't even do an hour of that hike, let alone with a pack, so I marvel, in retrospect, at the fact that I made it.

The people at the refuge were amazing, and a good reason to go back, by themselves. I had printed some beta from routes.gr, but these guys were real connoisseurs of the surrounding climbs, and had lots of additional beta to share, so that worked out really well.

The next day we climbed the Comici/Escher route, which was the first technical route ever to be climbed on Stefani. It was ridiculously easy, probably 5.3 at most, but worth doing, since we really had no feel for route finding or the quality of the rock on Olympus. We realized that the challenge in the easier routes is really not the moves, but rather rockfall. The moves on easy routes in this type of chossy limestone are, in fact, quite boring. There are tons of incut edges, and you're always facing the rock and moving up like a crab. It's nothing like climbing granite, where, aside from slab climbing, every single move is different, even at low difficulty grades.

Halfway up Stefani
Originally uploaded by slampoud

The next day we were looking for more of a challenge, so we asked around and the guys pointed us to Ahladi, another route on the front side of Stefani, to the left of C/E. We got to the base and decided to solo the first & last pitches, since using the rope just dislodged pebbles and pissed us off. I led the second and fourth pitches, and Ben led the third. Ben managed to place gear in such annoying places that I was cursing for the most part on the pitch that I followed, and I had to leave a hex behind. The most memorable part of the climb was definitely the fourth pitch, which involves a really neat traverse. Apparently people call it "the pilgrimage", because beginners often get scared and gripped, and find themselves groveling across the ledge instead of walking a little lower and keeping their hands high on the ledge. In any event, it was easy but more memorable than the rest of the choss. Ahladi was tons and tons of fun, but definitely not a challenge.

We had originally discussed also climbing Mati, a route on the other side of Stefani that day, but Ben was feeling very "accomplished", so we went back to the refuge and chilled while watching a couple of the guys open a new route on Stefani through binoculars. The next day we descended, this time via the Zonaria and the Zolotas refuge. My knees were killing me and the whole thing was abso-fucking-lutely miserable. And that was it for climbing in Greece.