Country High Point #12 – Greece – Mount Olympus (2918m)

After a belter little coffee and pastry in Litochoro, we set off for Prionia, which is where the start of the trail is, it took about 30 minutes to drive there. The roads were absolutely rammed, we tried the main car park and just missed out on a spec, so we had to drive back about 500m and found a spot on the side of the road, it was midday though and fully expected.

Once we were set, off we went to climb what would be my favourite day of hiking so far in my fairly young life. We already knew the mountain itself looked cool as fuck from the views we had at Litochoro and what we had seen online, but once we started getting closer, the excitement of completing this gained traction, it reminded me of The Dolomites.

In typical fashion, we went for a nice steady pace which got us up and moving pretty quick. It was great to see the vast array of jeans on show from fellow hikers, climbing up hill in 25 degree weather, fucking oddballs haha.

We arrived at Spilios Agapitos Refuge after about 2.5 hours where we had a break and something to eat. Having already done Musala the day before, we could definitely feel the burn, but wanted to stick to the plan and knew we could safely complete the up and down, even if it took us a bit longer. The refuge looked pretty cool and we were looking forward to a nice hot meal later on as a reward for our efforts.

Off we plodded, the elevation gain from this point is fairly rapid, we were sitting at about 2050m at the refuge, knowing we had the best part of 900m more but with only a few kms to hike.

The final stretch up to Skolio (Mount Olympus’s second highest peak at 2911m) was one of the hardest days hiking I’ve had in a long time, lack of preparation and a full day hiking and driving the day before was definitely catching us up, more so me than Tom. If only I had the taste buds of a goth, I would have drowned myself in a can of monster there and then.

Once at the top, we had a minute to take in the unreal views we had all around us, full well knowing it was going to be scramble time, an exposed scramble at that. Myself and Tom had done plenty of these in the past, but looking to where we had to get to and the lack of energy we had, it definitely gave us the wibbly jibblys. 

Using the nicely marked rocks, we started to descend, taking our time and enjoying the ride once we got going, it took us another 45 minutes ascending back up again on the climb towards the peak, we saw a few others on the route over, who were arse sliding their way to safety. Once we finally made it, the sheer relief and happiness was one for the memory books, we even had the peak to ourselves for about 20 minutes. Unbelievable views and feeling of accomplishment.

Off back down we went, absolutely buzzing all the way until we got back to the refuge, the trail was empty at this point apart from a good number of goats, or was that me and Tom? We loaded ourselves up with food, coffee, water and snacks to get our energy back, before a really enjoyable baby wipe bath. No running water for showers at the refuge, so a night in a sticky sleeping bag it was. There was 8 beds in our dorm, of course the ratio of potential snoring fucks was going to be fairly high. I hadn’t stayed in a dorm for a good number of years, but it was definitely the right move, or was it?

Of all the people in our room though, I didn’t expect Meredith, let’s call her that, a 60 year old Greek woman to be the bane of our lives. I was tempted to jump off my top bunk and people’s elbow the shit of her, the snoring was that loud and bad. We got through it though, and off we trotted the couple of hours down back to the car first thing in the morning, with about 3 hours kip between us.

We finished off the trip with a day to kill on the beach, recovering and chilling before the flight home later on that evening.

Brilliant trip.