Ghost Kitchen is a cool sector. If you're climbing around 6c, it's probably the premiere pick of places to climb on the island. The central part of the sector is an orange main wall which is just barely overhanging, which has resulted in the creation of huge tufa curtains and blobs the size of ponies sticking horizontally out from the wall. On either side of the main wall are grey slabs which offer routes from roughly 6a to 7a, if you're into that kind of thing.
When we walked up the hill to the cliff, it was clear that people
were into that kind of thing. The routes on the left of the main wall were pretty packed. Thankfully, there's been a stack of new routes put up in the last year or two and there was still 20 routes to choose from.
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| If only all route markings were as creative. |
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| How's that for a hold? Kurt riding Axium 6c+. |
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| This route used to be 7a+. Kurt had to settle for 6c+. Still, grades are irrelevant -- the route is just awesome! |
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John (in red) battles the tufa/wall combo crux on the redpoint of Remember Wadi Rum 6c. Later, Luke flashed it.
This is the second most popular 6c in Kalymnos. |
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| Dave's rotator cuff is a bit buggered (although it's improving every day), so he's now a 1-arm climber. It's amazing the routes he's snatching his way up! |
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| Lewis and Serena 6b+ was a match made in filmmaker heaven. You'll have to wait for the trip video to see what I mean. |
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| John and I also took up Dave's 1-arm challenge. How's your footwork? |
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| Ruth on the sharp end on Persephone 6b. I was not able to do this route with one hand. |
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| The drill dust had barely settled on this before Kurt jumped on for a quick repeat, possibly a second ascent. Third route in from the right (there's about 8 new ones going in here). |
Once we'd done our hard routes, and as many one-handed slabs as our toes could manage, we piled into the car to go explore
Skalia Cave. This is a cool feature of the island where you descend down a series of ladders into a pitch black, enormous ballroom with pretty amazing stalactite, stalagmite and crystalline features.
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| Skalia Cave features. |
Our 8th day of climbing dawned and it was decided
Odyssey offered the best mix of grades for our team, plus the opportunity to settle some scores with projects from day three.
Funnily enough, on the walk up to the cliff, there was some dragging feet. Whaaat?? Tired?? After seven full-on days of climbing? :)
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Lovely
textured rock for Ruth. With a sore toe, she climbed most routes in her
approach shoes today. So she has one usable foot and Dave has one
usable arm. They were quite the pair today (and probably had the most
fun).
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| Clipping clinic. Five minutes spent practicing the four ways to clip on the ground pays dividends! |
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| View from the cliff. |
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| John finding the rests. |
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| I would call this effort of the day. Lewis ticked Atena 6b+ today on his fourth shot (second day on the route). Another super battle producing his hardest ever lead. This guy has given 100% every single day he's hit the rock. I couldn't ask for more. |
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| Luke took a monster whipper off Calipso when he was too pumped to clip. Very solid burn. |
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| [Insert your humorous caption here] |
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| Luke does battle with Calipso 6c+ |
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"What's in here then?"
I've
wanted to do this wacky route for ages, never got around to it. Until
today! Stemming all the way to the top and then some surprisingly hard moves up the
headwall. It's Carribean Wedding 6c+.
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| Kurt slabbing it out. |
Only two more days to go guys. You can rest on the plane on the way home :)
It's time to pull out all the stops. And here ... we ... go.
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