This is the review of the Leonidio guidebook. But since this it is also my blog and thus I can write whatever I want, you will first have to read my rant about hardly relevant things.

Part 1. Giorgos’ hardly relevant rant or what I have learned from my recent Leonidio trip.

1. Lettuce is considered super posh in certain Peloponnesian mountain villages. If ordered by an Athenian person, the proper response of the waiter is “sorry boys, this is not Kolonaki”.
2. Fasolada, Chestnuts, Gida Vrasti, Ocra. All have been promised. All have been denied. Cruel world.
3. I really hope the guys at Freemeteo.com are climbers and they were at Leonidio on the weekend of the 28th.
4. Priests trying to conjure rain are such freakin amateurs. Desperate farmers shall contact the people who have really fine tuned this kind of shit….The process is simple. First bolt some routes near your village. Then call me to pay a visit your drought wrecked area. Your problems will disappear as soon as I start tying up under the first route.
5. People are broken. I mean WE are broken. We are egotistical bitchy motherfuckers who might mean well but in the end we screw everything up. Thus:

Rant is over. Thanks you for your patience. Here is a Peloponnesian Tepui picture to change the mood.

Part 2 – Review of the much awaited Leonidio climbing guidebook.

Heading to Panjika to buy the new guidebook I could hardly contain my excitement. I have long ago fully embraced my nature as a climbing geek and I have a particular soft spot for guidebooks.  There are not many of those in Greece so I was really looking forward to get my hands on this new promising publication.

I got the guidebook from the man himself, Michael Schreiber, one of the authors and hyper active Leonidio climber. He seems happy and proud about the new book and damn he should be! Getting a new book hot off the press after months of hard work is a feeling you never forget…

My eyes fall on the cover. First impression is intriguing. The cover is… thought provoking. Certainly not the “standard” stellar wide angle shot of a colorful badass climber fighting the tufa boas of Elona. These Panjika guys (and gals) beg to differ that’s for sure. This feels like their opening statement. Till the next that is, since the forward of the book sets the pace. I get this feel that I am reading a sort of a manifesto. “Leonidio is not the new Kalymnos or even Kalymnos-like” say the authors “so please stop comparing the two places to see who wins”. Leonidio is a unique place, a destination of its own and it stands out irrespective of comparisons. The statement the authors are trying to make is (I think) that Leonidio shall not follow the trajectory of just “the new place” for the consumer oriented climbing industry, the place to come, digest and then move forward. Having fallen to the Kalymnos-comparison pithole myself, I admit my guilt and in retrospect get to agree with the guys. Leonidio is something unique and should be treated as such. No need to compare to anything.  Hats off to the authors for this approach.

Quickly running through the pages, I seem to find easily all practical info needed to organise a good climbing day. Nice clear topos, simple and clean layout, accurate crag access details, beautiful photos. All you need to go out and climb these Leonidio rocks is included in the book. Simple, accurate, lean.

What about things I wanted but didn’t get? Here’s some -not particularly necessary- things I looked for and could not find.

First, the routes are missing stars or some other sort of qualitative ranking. I would bet my money that this is not an omission but a rather conscious decision of the authors. And to be honest it is something I thought I would miss but after all I did not. Maybe there is no need to herd people to the best routes. Let them decide for themselves based on what their eyes and experience tell them.

Then what about route descriptions? The guidebook has all the necessary information about individual routes (i.e. name, grade, height, etc) but not the characteristic short individual description, a trend introduced by the Rockfax guides and became global practice for modern guidebooks. Now that’s something I missed indeed. Probably that’s just me being a geek 🙂 . Personally I like to read guidebooks from cover to cover, and read both about routes I can climb and routes I cannot. I like to imagine what it would be to be on these routes and remember again those i did already. So yes, I wish there were descriptions on the Leonidio guidebook. Having said that, I know lots of people who actually don’t read descriptions (and some who even think they are bad -or stupid- and should not be included in guidebooks). It’s a matter of taste I guess and as every guidebook author will tell you, once the readers get the book in their hands everyone is a critic…So don’t worry too much about it.

On the contrary I was happy to see that the guidebook included some other important information and that is the name of the route setters of each individual route. For me, keeping note of this little historical climbing trivia is one of the most important secondary functions of a guidebook. A printed guidebook is the only place where the effort, vision and passion of a route setter get to be widely acknowledged and saved in time. It is the voice of the community to say “thank you” to the person who spend time and effort to create a route for everyone to enjoy. The generic route information of grades and names can be found in a ton of places in the internet era but usually internet sites do not bother to mention the route setters (sure there are few notable exceptions…). But it is the systematic and methodical approach of a printed guidebook that solidifies this piece of climbing history and saves it from oblivion. We own this recognition to the route setters and it is a duty of guidebook authors to keep this information and this legacy. It certainly makes an author’s job much harder and prone to errors (guilty here again!) but in my opinion a guidebook not mentioning the route setters of individual routes is a job half-done.

So if you are still reading, my verdict is, buy that guidebook – hands down. Apart from the usual staff, there is also a perspective of the bolting situation in Leonidio. I am sure many people will find that both surprising and interesting.

The price is fair and the authors promise that after covering the publication costs all the money made from the sales will go back to the bolting effort. It’s a 27 Euros well spent.

G.