Mount Olympus: Above the Gods, Below the Clouds

Most people have an opinion on Olympus before they have ever set foot on it. The name carries centuries of baggage—Zeus, lightning bolts, the Pantheon assembled on the summit in gleaming marble. The reality is more demanding and, in many ways, more awe-inspiring. Olympus is a serious alpine environment. Its highest point, Mytikas, reaches 2,917 metres. It has multiple peaks, technical ridges, and weather that changes with genuinely dangerous speed.

The standard ascent starts from the mountain village of Litochoro, a crisp, clean town at the base of the Enipeas Gorge. The trail follows the river through a cathedral of plane trees and then begins a relentless ascent through zones of beech, black pine, and finally the exposed alpine zone where the wind is constant and the light has a crystalline, high-altitude quality that you cannot find anywhere below.

From the Skolio summit, the second highest peak which requires no technical climbing, the view is a full 360-degree panorama of northern Greece. The Aegean glitters to the east. The Thermaic Gulf gleams silver. The Thessalian plain—where the myths of the Olympian gods played out against the backdrop of this very mountain—stretches out below like a rumpled green blanket.

Standing up there, you understand the mythological impulse completely. The ancients looked up at this peak, perpetually shrouded in cloud, and they were entirely correct to believe that something extraordinary lived there. Olympus is extraordinary. Call it what you will.