After the Monasteries at Meteora, Megan and I made our way to a town called Litochoro. Litochoro is at the base of the Olympus Mountain Range where we planned to hike to the highest peak, Mytikas, staying a night in one of the refugios just below the summit.
Early the next morning we were up and off to the bakery to buy spanakopita (spinach and cheese pie) to fuel us for the two days of hiking. We parked the car at Gortsiá carpark and then hitched a ride over to Prionia carpark. This was so we could hike the mountain in a loop, going up the steeper ascent, and down the longer way the following day to end up back at the car at Gortsiá. We started the hike proper at 9:30am and ascended quickly doing the first 1000m altitude to Refuge A in under 2hrs and continued on to summit the peak of Skala, another ~850m elevation again in under 2hrs.
From the refuge up to Skala peak was hard, with the path becoming increasingly steep until the very end, fighting the biting cold wind blowing off the mountains. We slowly made our way up the back across crusty snow that had fallen in the last few days and stayed because the the temp was consistently around 0°C.
From Skala Peak you can see Mytikas Peak across the way, and so we decided to summit now rather than the next morning as the weather was good and skies clear. The way from Skala was an hour long icy steep climb and scamble up and down and around the edge of the ridge line. We braved the nerve wracking ice slick footing and sheer drop offs to either side as we scaled our way across and finally made it to the highest point in Greece, Mytikas Peak.
After taking in the views and a few photos with the snow encrusted Greek flag we took off for Refuge B where we were staying the night. An evening taking in the sunset from just below Mytikas and chatting to the other hikers ensued before an early bed.
The next morning we got up for sunrise and walked the 15 minutes to Ilias Peak for amazing views as it lit up the mountain range. Afterwards we grabbed our bags and took off for the descent. Beautiful views of the valley and Thracian Sea ensued as we rapidly got down to the car in about 3hrs.
We had a very cold sink bath in some public toilets to wash off the worst of the smell and then went to town and treated ourselves to a delicious lunch before driving to Delphi.
The next day we visited the ruins of Delphi and then made our way to Athens.
