Kantouni Beach Hotel - Kalymnos island, Greece

Kalymnos, the sponge diver's island, offers fantastic sport climbing in a cool and peacefull setting. The rock is of excellent quality and the 302 single - pitch sport routes existing, leave many cliffs of 10 to 200 meters offering numerous possibilities for new routes. The rock climbing is never monotonous, as there are routes on slabs and walls with delicate moves, or routes on overhangs and roofs with holes and stalagmites. There are at the moment, 41 equipped crags with 302 pitches, from F4a to F9a+ (all bolt protected sport climbing), mostly west facing, but a few south facing.

The rock is excellent quality limestone, sharp at only a few points, without vegetation, and the pitches are equipped with rustproof bolts. At the moment all the routes are one pitch, but there are many possibilities for amazing two to five pitch routes. Indeed, apart from the quality, there is also the vast amount of rock available The open routes do not represent more than 10% of their possibilities, while there are several equally good cliffs completely untouched that are awaiting their first route.

The first routes on the island were first put up by the famous italian rock climbers Andrea Di Bari and Andrea Gallo. Andrea Di Bari discovered the rock climbing interest of the island in 1996 while on honeymoon with his wife, also a rock climber; however they had no equipment with them. He came back in the autumn with an intermediate school with the purpose of opening routes. Fidteen were then opened on Archi and Odyssey by the students. In the meantime, almost all the pitches have been equipped by Italian and German climbers, the later more recently active, while practically every month new pitches are equipped. Up to 1999, the equipped pitches were easier sport standard on grey slabs (from F5b to F6c), but now the yellow / red overhanging sections are also being taken into consideration, and the island is really full of superb caves with icredible holes, stalactites and rifles.

The potential for new roures is huge and many crags are waiting their first route. New multi-pitch routes are also possible. At easter 2000 there was a rock climbing course for ten locals, organised by the Municipality of Kalymnos, aiming to form a group of local climbers. The instructors was Aris Theodoropoulos and Thomas Mihailidis. The instructors also undertook in the summer of 2000 a program, in colaboration with the local council, to open new routes and to check the protections of existing. Kalymnos is one of the few rock climbing areas in the world whose protection is certified by professional mountain guides working to strict specifications.