Holy crap! We are back in good ole ‘MERRrrrica… specifically the New River Gorge.  AHhhhhhh.  It smells better here ,I think. At least, 15 meters from the wall it certainly does.  So, I wanted to write for a minute about our last days in Kalymnos.

Unfortunately, weather.com didn’t get the memo that we had routes to climb, and projjys to send, because the last week we spent most of the week trying to schedule our climbing around the rain.  Alas, the sun shone upon us for our last two days where we first raced up to the Grande Grotta to get or final fix on some of the big rigs.  I was feeling a bit under the weather so I decided that the physically exhausting 45 meter cave climbing would be a bad idea, so I relegated myself to belay duty while eddie ventured back up “Fun de Chichunne” for round three!  After what might have been the longest redpoint belay I have endured, Eddie clipped the chains of “Fun de Chichunne”, and can NEVER make fun of me for climbing slow AGAIN!  I should give Ed some mega-props for making quick work of this classic… it packs some hard boulder problems in between the gut-buster tufa ‘rests’, and is a super relentless, ‘boogie til you puke’ style limestone tufa rig. BLAM!

After being inspired by Eddies sendage, I decided I felt well enough to walk over to Spartacus Wall.  In a sad moment, I knew I had to take my draws off of Daniboy, because it was still wet. Sigh.  Eddie told me that I should remember the first lyrics to our new favorite song “Take it to the Top” by Trevor Andrew: “A fool turns round when his luck turns bad”…. so, with that in mind, I told myself that “i feel wonderful”, and turned my attention to another route.  I had not yet tried the classic of the area ‘Sparticus’ and I knew this would be my last chance to climb it.  All I knew about the route was that it was somewhere between 20 and 25 meters long (60-75′), had a boulder crux, and was downgraded from 12d to 12c.  So, I decided to go for it.  With the draws still hanging from the previous party, I embarked.   I choppily climbed through the 5.11ish intro with my hair blowing into my eyes, and I couldn’t see… I was off to a bad start!  I quickly burrowed my brizkit into the side of a monstrous tufa and took a  monstrous breath.  I knew I was going to have to ‘get it together’ if I was going to do this thing first try.   I managed to finagle a no-hands stance to re-tie my pony tail.  Wow.  I’m almost embarrassed that i just said that.  So, feeling empowered with 20/20 vision, I moved up into what I perceived from the ground to be the crux.  My plan was to mount a tufa, reach into a 2-finger pocket, and make a massive sideways lunge to a ‘jug’.  Well, that was abandoned almost immediately when I couldn’t figure out how to even approach the tufa.  I began to climb ‘on the fly’, and found a right kneebar that allowed me to reach the 2-finger pocket, instead. I was psyched, to touch it because it felt like it had some bite, and I knew I could yard my massive body weight all the way to the ‘jug’.  SLAP! I nailed the jug….. not a jug…. dangit!! Ok, do one more move, Rachel… wham! Fingerlock. SICK. I can hang out here allll day. I rested fully… and looked up ahead of me at what I previously thought would be smooth sailing through limestone jugs.  Notsomuch.   I stared up at a sea of cryptic-ness reminiscent of a Rifle-esque blocky horror show.  I had frankly NO CLUE how to grab the holds.  I started climbing anyways, racing through the polished limestone freak-fest… death gripping my way upward.  I grabbed all the holds incorrectly, and felt as if I was falling upward.  I managed to work myself into an irreversible frenzy of lactic shock.  Awesome. Now, let me take a minute to diverge from this story…

If you have been following this blog, you know that we have already been visited by euro-matt stark, and euro-Porter Jarrard.  Well, who came along to visit us on this second to last day was none other than New River Mountain Guides: Elaina Arenz-Smith  and Kirk Bjorling!! How exciting!

So back to the story, as I’m nearing the anchors of Spartacus, and imagining myself falling from these HUGE block jugs completing the punt of the century… I meet none other than Euro-Elaina!  To my complete horror, I saw that our routes converged, and we were on a CRASH COURSE!  I was on a death bender, and there was just not a hold big enough to satisfy my cravings.  Fortunately, Euro-Elaina recognized my distress, and kindly allowed me to erratically climb the jugs in front of her while she waited and casually shook out on the shank holds.  Thanks for the encouragement euro-Lainers!! Always there for me on my big send days!  I’m pretty sure that I got struck by lightning, as I epileptically clipped the shuts… and immediately grabbed the other end of the rope for some immediate relief. AHhhhhhh. ‘MERrica!! Yeeeeah.

I started feeling a bit better for our last day, and Eddie said I could pick where we climbed.  Since my favorite crag of the trip had been the beloved meteor hole of Sikati Cave… naturally, that’s where I wanted to tufa wrangle.  SO we packed up our scooter and motored up the island.  Eddie calls this place the ‘psycho sikati’… and for good reason… this place is SIIIIIICK!!

We via-feratta styled our way into the cave… down to ground level with a few badass goats who managed to downclimb 5.10 their way in here.  One of the goats looked a lot like our friend David Nimmer.  Here is a short clip of Eddie (the animal whisperer) with one of the goats:

In honor of the goats, I decided to hang the quicks on a beautiful 7b called: “Mort Aux Chevres” which means ‘Death to the Goats’.  Eddie thinks that this is a fitting name for one of the showpiece routes here in the psycho sikati because goats occasionally botch the 5.10 down-climb, and pizza their way to the bottom. Elodie took some beautiful pictures of this route.

To round out our day in the cave, we decided to finish up with a stellar looking 7c+ called “Little Bulbos”. Not really sure about the name, but Eddie and I both agreed that this was the best hard route we climbed during the trip!  Given our unique tastes, you know this thing has to be awesome!!  It’s a totally rad line incorporating wild bloc sequences through blank sections, and solitary dripping stalactites.  After each giving it a go, we both instantly wanted to spend another week right here in the psycho sikati.  We had a quick pep talk going over the key beta, the sun was setting, and in a last-ditch effort, Ed embarked on round two with Little Bulbos.  He totally crushed the boulder problem at the 4^th bolt, and monkey-ed his way to the last boulder problem.  With a runout compounded by draw skipping, I heard some loud ‘Meinhold roaring’ echoing through the chasm.  And in a loud WHOOP of excitement, Eddie tossed hail mary pass and connected with the anchor clip just as the sun was setting.  Totally rad way to end the trip!  The only pics we got were of me NOT sending!! I really wish we had pics of Eddie… But here they are anyways:

Here is a video of  the sikati cave exit (this was from our first visit):

And here is a cool photo of eddie exploring within the sikati cave:

The climbing in Kalymmnos was so surreal, and we both feel fitter than ever!!  Definitely CAN’T WAIT to go back! So many routes to climb… one month in paradise just wasn’t enough.  Now we are back home and making frequent trips to the Red River Gorge to take advantage of the endurance we gained.  It has been truly awesome to see so many of our friends and family since we have returned, especially our hommies from Wisconsin! You guys are all amazing, and the hugs just keep coming!  November has been just beautiful here, and we hope it continues throughout the winter.  SO PSYCHED to be back in the Southeast.