Bouldering in Kos, Greece
Featuring Actual Boulders!
One of the things that has puzzled me about the sport of bouldering since I first took it up a little over a year ago is where the name came from. Granted I have only bouldered outdoors a grand total of eight times, yet I have never seen anyone, nor have I ever, climbed an honest to goodness boulder. Instead it has been all cliff faces, walls, ridges, etc. That changed last week on the island of Kos, Greece at a place referred to as Kuumotos, according to the popular rock climbing app, 27 Crags, which is what I used to find the site. The location was awesome and featured a huge field strewn with enormous boulders of various shapes and sizes, some of which had mapped routes of a number of difficulty levels. Unfortunately I only had about an hour to spend but I could have easily spent an entire day and not touched even half of the routes available, the vast majority of which have not been described. It is relatively easy to reach by car and the property it sits on is behind a very little used Go-Kart racing track.
I “spoke” to the owners via mostly hand signal and pantomime about what I was looking to do and they waved me back with mostly polite nods and smiles. It was the only climbing I did the entire vacation but I had so much fun in that way too short hour that I have zero regrets about not trying to do more. I have included a number of pics above and below to give the reader a sense of what I experienced. Unfortunately I lost my phone in Greece (long story) and with it all the vacation photos I had taken up to that point. Fortunately my traveling companion and good friend Kat was with with me and had taken some, but none capture a wide angle view of the boulder field. This site was the only one listed in 27 Crags but there were many more obvious potential bouldering sites scattered across Kos. If you want to beat the climbing crowds at Kalymnos a stopover in Kos might be a good way to find some open space.
