Legrand wanted in. The festival organizers had promised the invited rock stars a selection of unclimbed routes in the 8a to 9a range, but this hadn’t quite panned out. Though a large team of equippers created some wild lines, many of their offerings proved either too easy or impossible. Unclimbed rock of the correct difficulty was at a premium, and during one slide show I had heard Legrand grumbling about the shortage of projects.
Whatever. Dulac, it turned out, had become enamored with the multi-pitch climbing on a new cliff he had found — the one he raced off to with George’s new drill bits the day we arrived on the island — and at some point Legrand got the nod to try the Grande Grotta project, the last unclimbed line in the sector, which has now been closed to further bolting to protect the delicate stalactite architecture.
I took up a position near the back of the cave, cursing the bad light. Legrand stood below the route, which overhung some thirty meters, arching out through the massive amphitheatre to end in a small hanging cave at the Grotta’s lip. Legrand racked twenty-some draws and tied into an extra-long rope, belayed by none other than Andrea Di Bari, the Italian who discovered Kalymnos for climbing.
Legrand set off to onsight. Above the opening moves, the holds thinned to cauliflower-sized concretions stuck to the ceiling and stalactites only a few inches in diameter. Legrand moved through the delicate features with the care of an ice climber, seeming to know just how much to press or pull on the frighteningly thin columns of flowstone. His arms and legs moved instinctively into exotic stemming and wrapping combinations. A few tiny flakes and pebbles came down from the route, but to my surprise François seemed completely unfazed.
About eighty feet out the roof Legrand stalled at the crux section that had stopped all previous climbers. He tried a couple of sequences, retreating to an inverted rest in a pair of slim stalactites. When Legrand moved out of the rest a third time there was urgency in his movements. Pinching tiny cauliflowers and throwing a powerful drop knee, he yarded through a long sequence of dead-horizontal climbing that hurt my abs just to watch, finally working into a partial rest among some larger, but perilously delicate features. The final climbing beyond him looked much easier, with stalactites several meters long providing a woods-like passage to the hanging garden at the lip. It looked like he had it.
Legrand stemmed out, adjusting his stance — and then a stalactite snapped. Fragments of rock flew through the air, as did the Frenchman. The crowd below scrambled for cover. The rope zipped through the draws and went taught among the daggers of limestone. Legrand dangled, miles from anywhere, overlooking the shimmering waves of the Aegean Sea.
How many ways can you blow an onsight? I don’t know, Francois, but that way was one of the best. (Fifteen minutes later, on his next attempt Legrand made the first ascent of Fun de Chichunne, 8a+. A week later, Dulac onsighted the line.)

I witnessed other memorable performances over the course of the festival: Dulac redpointing a stunning, just-over-vertical pitch at his “Olympia” sector that he called 8b+ (5.14a), which would make it the hardest pitch yet done on the island — and part of a yet-unfinished three-pitch line; Mirjam Verbeek after about twenty pitches of 5.11+ and 5.12 climbing over the course of the day, coming within three moves of onsighting the mega-classic guidebook-cover route Aegialis (7c, 5.12d) in the last rays of a gorgeous Mediterranean sunset; an impromptu midnight street dance to celebrate the fortieth birthday of our new Austrian friend Marcus; Dave Graham crashing his scooter while trying to talk to his passenger and make a U-turn at the same time.
What did you think? I asked Tracy on the flight home. She summed up the Kalymnos experience quite nicely. “You felt like when you were there that you had no troubles — that it was just kind of paradise. If you were having an off climbing day or a tired day you could just go to the beach, which was what you were thinking about the whole time you were climbing anyway.”
Like the poster said, “a climbing paradise in the Aegean ...”