Kalymnos Climbing Retreat

About half of our of climbers come to our retreats alone. Often we do have groups of friends who sign up together, and we have couples pretty often, but we also have a lot of people just come by themselves looking  to meet people and make new friends. If you are hesitating to join  because you would be coming solo, please know that we expect a lot of our participants to be joining by themselves.

We generally have a wide range of ages at our retreats. The average tends to fall  between the ages of 30 to 45. But we have had quite a few climbers in their 60's join as well. It really is up to the attitude and physical ability of the participant.

You do not need to be an experienced climber to attend, but we recommend some climbing experience before signing up for a week of climbing. We recommend that everyone attending is able to top-rope a 5.9 in a climbing gym without taking or falling. While climbing 5.9 in a climbing gym is different than climbing a 5.9 outside, having the ability to climb 5.9 in the gym will set you up to have a great time in Kalymnos. 

 If the trip fills, we'll have 20-25 climbers and 5 guides. Our daily groups will consist of 4-5 climbers per guide, letting us have our ropes on 2-3 routes at a time. 

Also our trips are 90% women. Men are perfectly welcome, but they tend to be outnumbered.

The food scene in Kalymnos is international enough that you shouldn't have any trouble. You'll also be on your own for most of your lunches and dinners, so you'll be able to make choices as to where you eat on most occasions. We'll have a breakfast buffet at the hotel in the mornings and be at nice restaurants for the few nights we eat out together too, so you'll always have options. Traditional Greek food does involves a lot of meat, seafood and dairy, but we've had celiacs and vegetarians come to Greece in the past and they did just fine. Vegetarian options are widely available, and vegans may just find navigating the Greek love of meat and dairy to take a little extra effort. 

Probably! Lead climbing is certainly not a requirement for anybody on the trip, but we're happy to let you lead as long as you can pass a belay test similar to those found in most gyms (minus the falling). Our main goal is to keep everyone safe, so on our first day out together we’ll just want to see that everyone is able to manage the rope, communicate, lead and belay safely before being cleared to do it throughout the week. If you haven't led yet but you'd like to work on lead skills throughout the week, we'll try our best to help but our priority to is to make sure everyone gets to climb as much as they want. If you don’t plan on leading, we’ll just ask you to go through a quick belay test to make sure you’re good to go belaying those who are. 

You've got a few options.

1. The easiest way to get to Kalymnos is with a connecting flight from Athens right to the island. The airport is about 20 minutes away from our hotel, and we'll be there to pick you up. The catch is that flight options are limited, and can be unreliable as they often get cancelled by high winds.

2. Your second and more reliable option is to fly to the nearby (and much larger) island of Kos and take a ferry to Kalymnos. There are more flights to Kos than Kalymnos making it easier to schedule, and the ferry takes about 30 minutes .We'll be there to get you in Kalymnos when you arrive at the town of Pothia, about a 15 minute drive from our hotel.

3. Your third option is to take a ferry all the way from Athens (the port is called Piraeus), which is an overnight adventure, but could be fun if you're feeling up for a sea voyage. 

However you choose to do it, if you're on a really tight schedule Kalymnos might not be the best fit for you. Nailing a four-flight and two-ferry sequence all in one go doesn't always go according to plan, and since a delayed flight could spell disaster, we strongly recommend building in some room for error by planning to spend a night in Athens or Kos before continuing on to Kalymnos,

We have two types of payment plans available. 

Payment Plan 1 (Two Payments): This plan requires a 50% deposit, of which 10% of the total cost of the trip is non-refundable. Apply the discount code "retreatdeposit" at checkout. Full payment will be required three   months prior to the retreat start date. 

Payment Plan 2 (Monthly Payments): 

This option is only available if the retreat is 5 or more months away. This plan requires a 10% deposit, of which 10% of the total cost of the trip  is non-refundable. Apply the discount code "paymentplan" at checkout to  take advantage of this option. We will split the remaining payment into subsequent monthly payments. Full payment will be required two months prior to the retreat start date. We charge $50 to utilize this option as it requires much more work for our team to manage. 

We have a very strict cancellation policy. Please review it before committing to this retreat. We HIGHLY recommend purchasing trip protection as we will not modify our cancellation policy under any circumstances.