With the gods on Mount Olympus

THE encouraging thing about the ancient Greek gods is that they were all so badly behaved.

Lustful, jealous, petulant and mischievous, they reflected all too accurately the failings of their mortal worshippers.

And, if Robert Graves's classical scholarship is to be believed, all that ambrosia was not mere honey wine but amanita muscaria: Zeus and his fellow immortals spent half their time on Mount Olympus stoned on hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Magic mushrooms notwithstanding, I was tempted by the idea of a quick jaunt in the throne room of Greece's flawed gods, to ponder my own human frailty.

My fellow climber Mark Jenkins had just smashed his shoulder in a 40mph mountain bike accident at home in Wyoming. Keen to combine therapy with a trip to Europe, he suggested that Mount Olympus, virtually climbable without the use of arms, would be good for convalescence.

I was enrolled on the strength of various fractures from past climbing accidents. A pair of old crocks, cursed with delusions of immortality, we would hobble to the highest, holiest summit in Greece.

On the flight north from Athens remnants of winter snow were clearly visible in an aerial preview of Olympus, before I descended to meet Mark at Thessaloniki. From there we drove through the coastal plain of Thessaly to the Olympic Wings outdoor centre at Panteleimonas, run by Stelios, Sakis and Claudia.

All sorts of activities were on offer. Mark understandably refused to go mountain biking. I declined the paragliding, scared of doing an Icarus.

No - we would stick to good old-fashioned footslogging, starting with a gentle swim in the Mediterranean for a real sea-to-summit ascent.

Afternoon cloud massed on the highest peaks 10,000ft above and Stelios spoke darkly of 'overdeveloping' weather, so we postponed our departure until the morning, leaving on a clear dawn from the coastal village of Litochoro.

Ambitious plans for bushwhacking off the beaten track were banished by the temptation of a beautifully engineered path up the gorge of Mavrolongos, which means black on account of the dark forest of holly oak, walnut, chestnut, beech, fig and spindle, underplanted with massed geraniums and orchids.

You can bypass this five-hour section by driving up an alternative gravel track to the first wayside restaurant, but we preferred to walk. And what a walk! No sign of mushrooms but gorgeous flowers everywhere, shady glades and ice-cold pools in the river if you really needed to cool off.

Half way up the gorge, Byzantine icons, candles and oil lamps decorate a whitewashed chapel nestling under a huge overhang - a precursor of the full-scale monastery further up the valley.

The latter was destroyed during-the German occupation but is being rebuilt. Dedicated to Agios Dionysius, it seems a bizarre adoption by Orthodox Christianity of the pagan god of boozing.

Our own boozing was limited for the time being to one welcome beer at the roadhead restaurant. Then the serious work started - a steady threehour climb up a now steeper switchback trail. Deciduous trees gave way to Balkan pines. Huge mulleins gleamed silver and yellow beneath an increasingly black sky. We were in for some serious overdevelopment and made a mad dash to the mountain hut at Spilios Agapitos.

'Hut' is a misnomer derived from the Alps. Like similar grand structures in Switzerland or Austria, this refuge boasts several large dormitories, washrooms and a restaurant. Thunder crashed all around and rain beat vertically on the roof as we enjoyed a huge meal and flagons of wine beside a roaring fire with aspiring summiteers from all over the world - not quite bacchanalian but decidedly convivial.

The walls were decorated with framed photos of earlier Olympuspioneers, such as Christos Cacalos from Litochoro, who made the first ascent of the highest summit Mytica with Swiss mountaineers Fred Boissonnas and Daniel Baud-Bovy in 1913. Up to that date, pilgrims to Olympus had contented themselves with the lower summits, leaving Mytica and the other highpoint, Stefani, to the gods.

No such humility for us. At 6.30 the next morning we set off, bound hopefully for the highest sanctum. The rain had stopped but the bare, striated limestone of the upper peaks still gleamed dully under an overcast sky. After about an hour's climb the path divided.

Unable to decipher the vague contours of our map, we looked instead to the rusty pictorial version on a large signpost and decided that we should take the right-hand route, below the ridge and sheltered from the cold wind.

Traversing in the mist, cut off from the rest of the world, Mark and I reminisced about past climbs including the infamous North Wall of the Eiger.

Olympus was only a stiff walk but suddenly the limestone walls, looming foggily above us, began to feel rather Eigerish. Somewhere up there was the summit of Mytica and we just hoped that we would know how to find it.

RED paint flashes made up for the map's deficiencies, pointing the way left up a rocky gully. After walking up 9,000ft from the sea, we now had a little 'scrambling' to entertain us on the final section - not difficult enough to be called a 'climb' but sufficiently steep to warrant the occasional steadying hand.

In winter, smothered in snow and ice, it would be very serious. Even now, in the third week of June last summer, there was a smattering of snow from the previous night's storm and we had to move carefully, particularly Mark, with only one arm to hold on with if his feet slipped.

It was just tricky enough to rise above the tedium of mere walking.

Mountains are sacred in almost every culture. Their holy status can be explained through sheer scale and grandeur, their towering dominance in the landscape, their proximity to the sky and so on.

But what makes mountains special is the constant, dramatic interplay of light and shade, sun and cloud, starlight and storm - the atmospheric theatricality of it all. Those are the moments you remember - those glorious, transformation scenes when, suddenly, all is revealed.

Olympus obliged with just such a scene as we emerged from the gully on to the final summit ridge. The cloud parted and light broke through to glitter on feathers of frozen rime adorning rocky towers, bright on our eastern side, still dark on the western side which dropped away in a satisfying precipice.

At 9,500ft above the Mediterranean, Mytica felt like a proper Alpine summit. It even had the statutory summit book, where we could sign our names, after soaking up the view west over endless forested hills merging into the distant Pindos Mountains.

To the south we could see other figures silhouetted on the lower, rounder summit of Skollio. Somewhere over there was the mythical site of Leibethra, where Orpheus was buried. To the northeast, 1,000ft below us, sunlight glowed on the Plateau of the Muses. Immediately to the north, separated from us by a deep gash, was the second highest summit, Stefani.

The day was still young so we decided to have a look at Stefani. Hazy about the correct route, we ended up doing a spot of modest rock climbing.

By the time we reached the top of Stefani for our second summit signature of the day, the view had dis- appeared and thunder was growling in the background. Despite our 60 combined years of mountaineering experience we managed to take at least one false turn on the descent, reminding ourselves yet again how easy it is to lose all sense of direction in the mist. At one point I found myself staring down an awesome precipice and feeling acutely mortal.

But soon we were back in the easy Mytica gully, safely on route, and stopping to chat to a jolly, garrulous party of Czechs, aged ten to 70 and all clad in jumble sale castoffs. They disappeared up into the mist and we continued down to resume the traversing path, which led us in half an hour to the Plateau of the Muses.

The idea had been to spend this night, the summer solstice, sleeping out in the open, with no manmade barrier between us and the immortals. We had even debated whether it was worth bringing sleeping bags in June. Now, with a damp, cold wind gathering strength, we began to waver.

Even Mark, who has bicycled from Vladivostok to St Petersburg, trespassed all over Tibet and canoed to Timbuktu - a man of impeccably rugged, granitechewing pedigree - was looking decidedly soft.

Threatened by more overdevelopment, we headed across the plateau to another hut.

The longest day seemed to peter out all too soon in dank, grey cloud and we retired to the warmth of the bunks. But on our third morning we were rewarded. The Plateau of the Muses seemed to float above the earth. We could see all the way down to the sea and beyond to the-Halkidiki Peninsula, where the sun rose over another distant holy mountain - the monastic retreat of Athos.

AFTER saying goodbye to the hut guardian we recrossed the plateau to a notch in the ridge then dropped down into a huge bowl on the west side of Olympus. There was only the vaguest trail over rock slabs and scree slopes, set in a cirque of dizzy spires. It was obvious that few people came this way yet this was the most spectacular corner of the mountain. Gentians, campanula, saxifrages and columbines sprouted from every nook and cranny.

Further down we found the exquisite purple bells arching from clumps of silver-furred leaves, which I later discovered were Jankaea heldreichii, unique to Olympus. Then we were down, out of the Alpine zone and into the forest, heading north down a long, deserted valley. For the first time the air was hot. Mark's shoulder throbbed, my knees felt delicate and we began to thirst for the beer we would find when we reached our midday rendezvous at the village of Petra.

We were tired but that kind of weariness brings with it a deep contentment, especially if you are descending through gorgeous country from the throne of the gods.

I just hope that it is not all destroyed. Aristotle Onassis once had a plan to turn the whole of Mount Olympus into a grand theme park, complete with cable cars and imitation classical temples on every summit. The scheme never came to anything and now a part of this unique massif is protected as a national park.

Let us hope that the Greek government will soon extend the park boundaries to include every flank of this very special holy mountain.

Getting there

Olympic Airways (0870 6060460) flies direct to Thessaloniki from Gatwick from £182 return.Olympic Wings (www.olympicwings.gr) organises mountain biking, walking tours,paragliding and other activities around Mount Olympus.Exodus (020 8675 5550) offers a 15-day trek in the region departing on July 21 for £999.