The refuge was great. Maria, the head ranger, is the daughter of the man who built the refuge and promoted it when it was a one-room cabin. It now sleeps 120 people. Maria’s mother was a German hiker who’d come to stay at the hut. She stayed once, then came the next year and stayed. Maria showed us around, and made us take off our shoes. We had to wear slippers or flip-flops in all parts of the refuge except the reception area. She does run a tight ship. The room we stayed in was in the new area and was colder inside than outside. The food was great and the views to the Aegean Sea were even better. Dinner was great and we met an amazing British couple who were in Greece to celebrate the wife’s, Mary’s, 55th birthday. Mary is a children’s book writer and dedicates her time to visiting schools and having children create puppets to tell stories. She and Kenneth, her husband, also take there puppeteering material to Romania every year to work with refugee children. Kenneth is a retired Classics professors turned story teller, who goes to schools dressed as characters of mythology and tells his ancient stories as Achilles or Zeus. They were really a wonderful, inspiring couple. Also in the room, quietly reading a copy of “the Iliad” was “Rule”, a mathematics teacher from New York.
Lights out was at 10pm, but I think I was asleep before then. The next day we got up at 6, there was no hot water, so showering was out of the question, had breakfast. Dad decided he wasn’t going to hike because of his heel, so Mo and I were going to go to the first summit, Skala, since we didn’t really think we’d want to go all the way up to the high point, Mytikas, by ourselves. To get to Mytikas there is a lot of scrambling up rocks, so not a good idea for the nervous hiker.
Mo and I started up. The whole thing really felt like an epic adventure, with small obstacles set in the way to test one’s worthiness to make it to the top. There were three large snow patches to cross, if you fell, you wouldn’t stop until you hit a rock or went over the cliff edge. Then the trail breaks into 2 and you have to decide which is the true path (that wasn’t so hard, because the other one ended and you had to turn back anyway). By the time we got above tree line, the wind really started blowing. As we stopped to put on our wind gear, I looked back and there was Dad limping up the hill. I guess he couldn’t let us reach such a mythical place without him. It took us about another hour to go up a very steep hill, with loose rocks and gusty winds. We saw several people turn back, but right when we got to Skala, the wind stopped completely and the weather turned perfect. Rule was also at this first summit and together we all decided to try for Mytikas. Rule was wearing a button up shirt and tie; maybe he wanted to make a good impression? 45 minutes of scrambling down then up and then around rock, I went through and overcame all of my fears and phobias about falling, slipping, misstepping, or otherwise coming to an untimely death. The climb was well marked with good steps and holds, but definitely not for the weary. We arrived at the top to views of all of Greece, the Aegean sea was a little overcast so we couldn’t see out to sea well, but the rest of the views were stunning. There was a book at the top to sign and leave your thoughts. We were the first to make it up that day.
We walked down, ate lunch at the hut, and after 8 hours of hiking, we made it to the trailhead. Mary and Kenneth gave us and Rule a ride to Litochoro in their tiny car. Then Rule drove us to the nearest car rental agency, which was unfortunately closed, in what was I would have to say a far more disquieting and frightening experience than climbing a crumbling mountainside. Rule hadn’t driven much in 20 years, and was not, umm, comfortable with his little rental car. I’ll leave it as that, since he did us a huge favor by bringing us back to the Poseidon Palace hotel and we are very grateful for that! (And more for making it back unscathed, I felt like I was in Herbie Goes Bananas). A good meal, good night’s rest and the next day was the trip to Meteora, an area where the unusual towering rock formations were used to built remote monasteries. They were built as early as the 12th c., I think, by a system of scaffolding, ladders and pulleys. Monks and nuns still live in 8 of these.
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