Mount Kofinas: Introduction
The first time I saw it I was awed. The second time I was left speechless looking at it for half an hour and the third time I shouted "belay" at the bottom of the imposing massif of Kofinas. One of the most beautiful mountains in Crete, south of Iraklio, with great climbing interest. The north face has three routes and the south five where two of them are multi pitch. You wont find many bolts here, just a few in belays. In the summer of 1999 two Austrian climbers climbed for the first time a long and difficult route for which we know almost nothing and the few information that we got were from Gunnar who lives and climbs in Kapetaniana. If you happen to climb that route or you know something about it please get in touch with me.
If you wanna climb any of the routes in the north face then the best access is from Kapetaniana or Sternes. You will need to have an off road vehicle as the last 3-4km of the road are really bad. In the following map you can see all the way down from Kapetaniana to the small church located in the base of the mountain. You can park or camp there.
If you wanna try the routes located on the south face of Kofinas, you can hike until you reach the summit and abseil down for 50 meters (that for the last pitches only). For the multi pitch routes (Zizibe and Pilgerpfad) you will need to follow the path to Monastery of Koudouma for around 30 minutes and then take direction north until you reach the starting point of the routes as described in the next pages. Be aware that you will need around one hour and a half. It's a little bit difficult to explain further the access to those routes. I'll try to take some extra photos when I'll go there again (quiet soon) and post them here. Pay attention to the climbing topos of those routes to get a better idea where they are located.
I've added one more map below showing the parking spots along with a part of the trail to the relevant routes on both north and south face of the mountain.
The upper P shows the way to access the routes on the north side of Kofinas while the other those on the south. It just shows a part of the path.
The last part of the south face of Kofinas as seen when you finish the 4th pitch of route "Pilgerpfad". Solid rock with excellent view to the Libyan sea. The is a lot of space for further development on this part of Kofinas.
Climbing the Mondschein (6a/6a+, 30m) in Kofinas south face. The route leads direct to the summit of Kofinas, 1250 meters.