olympus

(and the yapping award of 2023 goes to me, apologies)

due to me laying down on my phone and overhearing the alarm i had set for 6am, me and estelle had to leave the hostel an hour later than planned. in about half an hour, we made our way to the main bus station, bought round trip tickets to the trailhead near litochoro as well as two sandwiches and some proper gloves and set off.

after a smooth 90 minute ride, we arrived in the little town just below the mountain. it was as off season as it gets, so most mountain hardware shops and all info points were closed. we still managed to find an open tour guide agency, where we were told that all the shelters were closed and the snow would be too deep and the distances too long. we were happy to ignore most of this advice, as the young girl behind the counter frankly didn't look like she had ever set foot on that mountain anyway.

we did however, due to it being 11am already, decide to hire a taxi to get us all the way to the trailhead further up the mountain, saving us almost 2 vertical kilometres. after having a look at the local monastery, we bought two silver-gold emergency foils and called a taxi service. the driver brought us as far as he could with summer tires and we started walking.

the hike to the planned mountain shelter was surprisingly hard, but the four days worth of rations on my back might have played a role there. after two hours, we managed to find an unfrozen wayer spring where i bottled a couple litres for later. some time later, we arrived at the shelter. it was indeed closed, but had an emergency room, just like we had suspected. take that, front desk lady.

temperatures were super mild, but after (a beautiful) sunset it got frosty pretty quickly. we smoked out the entire room in an effort to get a fire going, which to our own surprise, actually worked. had some dinner and luckily didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning in our sleep.

we were in bed by 6, so i had plenty time to make plans. originally, i had wanted to do a four day tour, each day going 10-25 kms with at least 1.5k vertical distance. although estelle would accompany me for two days, she would have to turn back the next day to pick up her shift at the hostel. because we hadn't seen a single soul on the mountain and the exhaustion of the first little section put my planned hikes into perspective, i decided to play it safe and leave with estelle after just two days on olympus.

we got up at 6 and started walking in the dark. there was a singular pair of tracks leading the way, the only sign of life we encountered for two days. soon, the horizon around us got brighter and turned scarlet red and we switched off our head torches. the sunrise was the most vibrant i have ever seen, in the distance across the bay you could even discern thessaloniki and the three peninsulas of mount athos.

snow got deeper quickly and we realized pretty quickly that we wouldn't make it to the summit plateau and back if we kept this pace. estelle decided to turn around two hours in and meet me back at the shelter. in order to be quicker, i drank as much water as i could, ditched the backpack and went onwards with only three chocolate bars, an emergency blanket and good spirits. the sun was scorching down at this point, so i didn't expect many complications.

just an hour of ridge walking and a short scrambling section later, i already found myself on the plateau just below the summits. never thought i would be almost 3000m up a mountain in late december and only need to wear a base layer, but here we are, with sunburn being the biggest danger of the trip. i followed the tracks to the top refuge. i had been faster than expected, so i decided to just push up the rest of the way to the next best summit (turned out to be toumba, the sixth highest). a stunning view awaited me up top, took plenty photos.

i was back down at the shelter before the clock struck 12. met estelle, who had spent her time drawing the landscape, munched down 5 sandwiches and started the descent back down to the trailhead. to our surprise, we immediately found two americans taking a driving break there, they agreed to give us a lift back to litochoro. arrived there two minutes before the bus and ran to the station just in time.

in conclusion: awesome trip, no issues at all, kinda surprised myself with how well we did the second day, but i will be back some day to make the proper summit.Read more