After waking up 2 to 3 times through the night because I was hot I got out of my bag around 6am and waited for the sunrise. I was quite surprised at how warm I was in the coffin. That’s what I call the Black Diamond Light Saber. I love this piece of equipment. It’s easy to set up even in the dark and you can lay it down just about anywhere. And then there is the ultimate feature of this bivy bag, it only weights 1.10 oz. WOW.
When I got up there was a bit of a breeze, maybe 10 knots but it was cold. My watch which I had hanging outside the bivy bag said 4c and that isn’t that cold. It was the moist wind that pierced right through you. The mountain is so close to the
I need to tell you about the theory that Constantinos has developed and I think it makes since. I told him I wanted to find the original route the Athenians might have taken to the Mountain. I mentioned that he couldn’t find any information on an actual trail from
Not more then 15 min from were we camped it becomes very steep. We are traversing the edge of the "Plateau of the Muses" where there is a very steep drop off. This is where I saw my first brass plaque with names of fallen climbers on it. This would be the first of many I saw through the day. After a while they became distracting and Nikolas said “Don’t look down and don’t look at the plaques.”
At one point I put my hand up to get a hold on the rock and there was a plaque there. Another problem was the rock was very loose. I soon learned that if I cause a rock to fall you don’t say ROCK you say
We made the summit, Myticas in about 2 hours and it was just about straight up. The dangerous area that I spoke about earlier was nothing like the areas I went through later. And guess what, my friend Nikolas tells me that we are not going down the way we came with packs on its too dangerous. We will continue on to the third highest peak Scholio. I like that Idea; I didn’t want to go back down those cliffs without protection. Once on the summit time seemed to stop. I could hear the music again and it was fine. Zeus and Apollo waved to me and said, “Come on over and join the party, what took you so long. We were waiting.” Then I woke up and realized my stomach hurt. It must have the bad bread that Constantinos gave us for dinner last night. On top you could see forever. You can see the
Now were going onto the next peak. This took about 1 hour and was just as difficult. There were some steep drop offs and long descending chimney’s looking back into the big bowl we had come up the day before. These were unbelievable sites. On the peak Scholio, I remembered I had the sign I had made on the Everest Base Camp trek of REI and the store I worked at. I told my friends there that I would get a picture of me at base camp, which I almost made and on the top of
I think now its time to get our asses down from this mountain. This is where the accidents happen, on the way down. It always seems that way. We were now going to go back down into the big bowl we had come up from the day before but we were now coming into it from a 2 O’clock location where on the way up we went on a 10 O’clock line. That’s looking at it from the break spot from yesterday. We negotiated our way off the caldron edge and onto the steep edges of the bowl. The rock was very loose and the best you could do was traverse back and forth while trying to balance yourself with the rock sliding underfoot. It was important to stay out of the fall line of each other so the rocks didn’t slide or roll onto your friend. This went on and on and on. I could see the bottom but it didn’t seem to get closer. I’m glad I had my trekking poles, my knees and ankles got so sore. Without them I would have been going down like a spider on all fours.
Now here is where the mistake was made. We are taking a short break and I pointed out to Nikolas that I thought I could see a trail on the left side. He hadn’t seen a trail marker yet coming down and he was always out front doing the trail breaking. Why I was chiming in on the route was ridicules, because I had no clue. My Athenian bloodhounds had the GPS units and the maps I should have just stayed out of it. We started towards the area I pointed out while trying to work down the left side. We hoped to be at the car by 4pm and it was 4pm with a long way to go. Well by following my advice we ended up looking over a 50 meter cliff with no way down. We had to backtrack for about 45 min. When something like this happens you all of a sudden start thinking about sleeping on the mountain another night and how much water I have left. I didn’t have much. I filled my one liter bottle and a 3 liter camelback just like I had on the way up but I was now low on water. It must have been that hard bread.
About this point we made our way to the edge of another cliff much, much higher then the last. Our point dog Nikolas was ahead and said to keep following the top of the cliff and I mean right on the edge. All it would take is a miss-step to the right and your saying hello to Zeus. Then all of a sudden there was a red mark on a tree. The first sign I had seen. I didn’t know that Nikolas had seen one other earlier but it looked good to me. Then the cliff ended, “now where do we go” Constantinos asked. We looked down and there were ladder rungs bolted to the wall. There were about 15 or so. One of the local climbing clubs had put these in. This was cool I thought, then we came to some cable strung so you could hold onto it like a rope bridge while you made your way down a very steep grassy tree area. At this point I was begging Constantinos for some of his water. I was going to offer him some of my Euros but I left them in the car. He gave me the water, nice guy. We knew we where going to make it.
At about 6pm we made the car and I was so tired I could hardly walk. Constantinos was hurting to. Nikolas didn’t say anything except that he was going to play football or something the next day. It’s great to be young. After peeling off our boots we made it out of there feeling like we just dodged the big one. It was about 45 min to a town named Katerini which is where we decided that they would drop me at. I was on my way to
2 comments:
Awesome pictures! Sounds like it was a really tough climb. So how do you feel now that you've slept with the Gods? Looks like you had beautiful weather too. What's next on your adventure?
Be safe, eat well and drink lots of Ouzo!!! Ha!
-Robert
i just read about the climb with Zeus et al.
cheeky bastard, playing with fate!
nah. whats it all about?
like your writing style. your humor.
tay bueno
laura
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