Table Of Contents
Three days on the mountain. Country highpoint, check. Easy technical climbing with good-enough weather.
Day -2: flew to ATH from WLG through AKL, BNE, YVR, and YYZ, on two back-to-back bookings (splitting at YVR). Stayed overnight at AKL at an airbnb self-described as a “nice Vietnamese family”; and chatted with the guy at the campfire before going to bed to catch my 6am flight to Australia.
Day -1: let’s call this AKL-BNE-YVR-YYZ. No lounge access at AKL on Qantas. Also annoyingly, Qantas charged me for baggage at AKL because Jetstar from WLG doesn’t interline. BNE-YVR is kind of a day flight, leaving late morning and arriving early morning, but it feels like arriving mid-evening for the origin time zone.
Walked to Richmond, photographed rabbits, crows, and black-capped chickadees, and ate curry fish balls (paying was annoying; at least they took Interac eTransfers). I thought it would be a good idea to eUpgrade YYZ-ATH and then YVR-YYZ is almost free (very few, or no, extra eUpgrade credits). Fortunately, that worked, so I managed to get a bit of sleep on the overnight flight.
Day 0: Arrived in ATH (36°C), had a couple of hours with all my stuff, then met up with Nikos and Mario. Nikos drove us to Litochoro, where we stayed in a hotel for the night. Excellent restaurant (Greek, of course) in the village. Views of Olympus.
Day 1: Bluebird skies. Drove on to Prionia, walked to Refuge Apostolidis via Gomarostalos. Forest until reaching the Muses plateau. Picked up dog in Prionia, which followed us until we reached the cables up to the plateau. Probably the dog followed the hiker going the other direction back down. The dog also moved efficiently from shade to shade and waited for us to catch up. No zigzagging. Saw herd of chamois on the plateau. Got a good look at Stefani from the refuge. Looks like Yamnuska in a way. Visited shrine on Profitas Ilias for sunset.
Day 2: Seven Summits Project attempt. Around the refuge, chamois and alpine accentor. Stefani summit by noon. Party of 9 Bulgarians near the summit let us pass, fortunately. One down, 6 to go. Through Natsis Pass (roped, easy fifth class), though Mario banged his knee at some point. Clouded over. Mytikas summit at 4, with an alpine accentor singing to mark our summit. Down and up to Skolio by 6:30. Cleared up. Left Mario to find his own way back, ran over to Agios Antonios (7:00) and back to the refuge, with horses and chamois along the way, arriving just at sunset. There was another hiker with a full pack who was moving pretty fast. We ran into him the next day doing more walking for training purposes. Got pretty crowded in the refuge.
Day 3: Back to Prionia, though with a visit to Toupa in the morning before leaving. Crossed a mule train going to the other refuge, through the Lemos saddle, tagged the Skourta summit, took the ridgeline (via Πετρόστρουγκα/Petrostourga) back to Prionia. Total number of summits: 5. Washed our feet. I had a huge kebap plate. Back to Athens with a flight back to Canada the next day.