The wider area of Mount Olympus

I would have loved to start this review with the words: I climbed the Seat of the Gods! But that wouldn’t be entirely true. The truth ist that I did not make it to Mytikas, the highest peak of Mount Olympus.

But first things first.
I arrived in Litochoro in the early afternoon and started my visit with the Olympus National Park Information Centre, located just outside the town. The exhibition there is relatively new and provides a good introduction to the park. The flora and fauna of the vegetation zones are presented on several levels, from the foothills to the highest peak.
I spent the night in Litochoro and started my two-day tour to Mount Olympus the next morning. It's about 20 kilometres from Litochoro to the Prionia car park, the highest point you can reach by car. The hiking trail up to the Spilios Agapitos Refuge leads through a beautiful forest of pine and beech trees. The hike takes about 3.5 hours, the refuge is located at 2060 metres above sea level (altitude difference from Prionia: 1000 metres).
After a lunch break, I left all the stuff I would only need for the night in the refuge and started my ascent to the Plateau of the Muses, my destination for the first day. The trail to the plateau is only another 2.5 kilometres, but with an altitude difference of another 600 metres. However, you will be rewarded for your efforts. As soon as you reach …

The area of the Mount Olympus National Park is accesible from tourist resorts of Olympus riviera. There are bus connections to village Litochoro that is considered as the gate to the Olympus area. From Litochoro, the most convenient is to take a cab (ca. 15 eur in 2006) to parking lot Prionia as we did. Then, we walked uphill to Spilios Agapitos Refuge, which is very convenient place to overnight and to explore the area. There are more Refuges in the area but this one is the biggest and most popular one. There is also marked trail from Litochoro uphill towards Olympus, but we decided to used it as a return-way.

When walking uphills, almost form the sea level, one can see the change of vegetation from bushes to pine forest to Alpine meadows to montaneous karst that is very impressive (photo). The highest peaks of Mount Olympus, with attitude slightly below 3000m, are located not far from Spolios Agapitos refuge, but the area of bare rocky mountains is larger, and it would require at least a couple of days to explore it properly. Anyway, the great abyss that surrounds the summits of Mytikas, Stefani and Skolio is really breath-taking. Unfortunatelly, I could not reach the top of Mytikas because of my vertigo... The entire area has prominent place in Greek mythology. Furthermore, in the broeder area of Olympus, there are also several monasteries and chapels from midle ages.

To concluded: besides the stuning natural beauty, the Mount …