And now the woeful tale of Zivitsa must I recount--the wild Greek peak pictured here. Looks easy to climb, doesn't it? You avoid the brown rocky parts and stick to the green gradual parts, and you walk to the top, right? My glorious ascent was an odyssey, a journey of body and soul...except a weird and weary one with lots of gaffs. My descent was a little less than glorious.
This is the sleepy inland village of Kato Doliano. On our last full day in Greece, I wanted to bag an unclaimed peak called Zivitsa, which was near our Airbnb. According to my peak-bagging club's app, no one had bagged it yet despite the fact that there's a trail from Kato Doliano straight up to the summit. The peak is only 2,445 feet above sea level, but the climb begins at 300 feet--so it's a respectable ascent over rocky terrain. With an existing trail all the way to the top, I thought it would take me just a few hours and precious little effort. But you know that I'm sometimes wrong, right?
I arrived in Kato Doliano on a Sunday morning, just as all the little old ladies--and the occasional husband--were getting out of church. A tiny grocery store was open on the main street of town, so I stopped in to buy some additional water for the trek (which turned out to be a good thing) and to ask about the trail to the summit. I did a Google-Translate screen shot of my question and showed it to the shopkeeper. "Can you show me the trail to the top of the mountain?" But Greeks? Greeks are not amused by our shenanigans. They've seen too much wickedness and stupidity to suffer fools. They're understandably wary of the affluent tourists flooding into their country and asking dumb questions, like how to get to the top of that hill! The shopkeeper irritably barked my question to the lady in line behind me, who read my phone and tried--in badly broken English--to tell me how to find the path to the top of their mountain, which none of them had ever been foolhardy enough to climb. Elizabeth was her name. Her husband was Alexander, and her 3-year old son was Theodore. Such kind people. But their directions gave me nothing, so I struck off with only my peak-bagging app to guide me. A certain village street leads uphill and out of town, diminishing into a narrow dirt lane and wending through olive groves to this view out over Kato Doliano.
It was a pleasant uphill hike on a late Sunday morning, and I had good hope that the narrow dirt track would lead me all the way to the virgin peak. The whole trek would take me 2 hours, tops.
I was taken aback when snarling, snapping guard dogs jumped at me from inside this abandoned complex. But they appeared to be chained, so I continued on my merry way. I pretended I was Orpheus, who sang so charmingly to Cerberus--the guard dog at the gates of Hades--that the dog wept and let him pass. A little further up, I heard pickup trucks traveling noisily up and down the adjacent lanes through the olive plantation. I was surprised that fieldhands were made to work on Sundays in such a devoutly Orthodox country. Whenever a truck came close, I resisted the urge to hide behind trees. I decided instead that if they stopped to ask me what I was doing, I'd simply show them the Greek questions that I'd screen-shot from Google-Translate onto my phone. Not only was I Orpheus, I was Jason and the Argonauts! No one could prevent me from accomplishing my mission.
Shortly before the little lane turns left and abandons the app's theoretical trail, ruins of an old orchard-keeper's cottage appear. Look closely at this photo. But where the road turns, the app instructed me to keep going straight uphill, traveling a barely-discernable path directly into the Greek woodlands, where (I told myself) the forest god Pan awaited me. If I were a polytheist, Pan would be my guy!
But Pan? Pan, too, is a Greek. He spurned my admiration and met me with thorny, prickly, jagged, scrubby little plants that reached out to grab and cut. The trail was badly overgrown in most places, but the mountainside smelled gloriously of oregano and something lemony. The sun was getting hotter, and the morning's sense of ease and excitement soon ebbed as I started to regret wearing shorts and the wrong kind of shoes. By the time I made it back down the mountain to this spot, my legs and arms would be bloodied and scratched and torn and imbedded with splinters.
But the trail occasionally emerged from the scrub and led me on a wide and easy course, albeit over slippery gravel.
The higher I got, the harder the trail got. Briar patches became more frequent, and the broad gravelly pathway gave way to steep rock cliffs that had to be carefully circumnavigated by bushwhacking into yet more brush. Past a certain point, this "trail" existed only online.
You know how those foolhardy souls who climb Everest are always finding the frozen bodies of other climbers on the mountainsides? Not too far along, I met up with the skeletal remains of another mountain climber. This is a large turtle shell, upside down, with my--as yet--not too badly scraped up leg for perspective. Note, O Future Self, how you foolishly tackled a wild Greek peak in ankle socks, shorts...and whatever the hell kind of shoe that is...with no traction and no ankle support.
But as the way got harder, steeper, and more dangerous, the views just got better and better. Whenever the trail was discernable at this height, which was rarely, it was composed of slippery, gravelly rock. I continued to follow the way that was marked on my app, but which was usually invisible to the eye. It frequently ran into the base of tall stone cliffs, and I knew that I'd eventually have to climb one or two of them. Now...real mountaineering requires three things I do not possess: 1) Gear; 2) Knowledge; and 3) Courage. At this point, I asked myself if sparing my own life was worth the loss of what little self-respect I had. But I couldn't turn back. This was my last opportunity to bag a real Greek peak before heading home on the morrow, and I'd be the first in my club to bag Zavitsa! Plus, I wanted to see the Aegean from the top. After a lot of brutal pushing, I finally reached a spot where a crevasse appeared in a rock face before me. I thought I could use it to climb past the first round cliffs near the summit. (Why do so many mountains--even in humble Pennsylvania--save their steepest, rockiest ramparts for the area just below the peak? Must have something to do with the violence of the force that created them.) I'd have to use both hands to scramble freehand up the crevasse, but it looked far more possible than climbing the sheer face itself, which was much too steep and smooth. The crevasse was only about 15 feet high, leading onto another jaggery bushwhack. But it was still scary with the world so far below. The trick would be to remember where this passage was located so that I could use it again to bypass the cliffs on my way back down the mountain.
Hansel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs. I left no trail at all. The views from the top of the mountain were nice. I did indeed see the Aegean Sea. But the sense of accomplishment was overcome by a nagging, persistent fear. I was not at ease up there. First, there were clouds of blackflies swarming. Second, I smelled cow dung pretty strongly. I might compare myself to Orpheus (who charmed the hell hound--Cerberus--with a song)...but Theseus I am not! I did not care to face the Minotaur. I'm scared of bulls and did not wish to meet one on a mountaintop. But more than a fear of flies and cows, I had a looming sense of dread ever since making it to the top: Would I really be able to find the crevasse that got me up here?
No. No, indeed. Click on this photo to enlarge it. Here's the clear blue Aegean in the distance. I tried backtracking to the crevasse that I'd used on my way up, but it was no use. There were no recognizable landmarks to guide me. I tried finding another downward passage, but I kept arriving at the treacherous, gravelly tops of long, steep drops--sheer stone cliffs, some 50 or 60 feet high. I was running out of water and starting to panic a little. What if I get stuck up here? What if night falls around me? What if my family has to call a rescue team and we all miss our homeward flights the next day? And for that matter, why isn't my family texting? What if--in my weakened and frantic state--I slip and fall over the edge? What if I die on this remote mountain? I have a daughter and a godson in Africa who will be very sad about that. In mounting desperation, I made for a radio antenna about half a mile away, thinking there must be a maintenance road leading to it. I could follow the road down the mountain and hitchhike back to the village and my car. But there was no maintenance road. (Did they fly the antenna in by helicopter?) Eventually, I followed my app back toward the original trail as closely as possible, which led me to a long drop over a rocky cliff. Keeping that theoretical trail as close as possible, in weary trial-and-error, I managed to find a gradual descent down to a lower cliff face and onto another crevasse that could be descended with a little freehand scrambling. After about an hour of this, I made it back to the trail, but I was tired! I still had a 4-mile descent ahead of me. By the time I stumbled back onto the little lane through the olive grove, it was early evening...and I'd only intended to be gone for 2 hours. My clothes were torn. My shoes were ruined. I had deep, nasty cuts on both legs and arms. And my self-confidence (already low) was at a real deficit. I trudged heavily, like a zombie, to the place in town where I'd parked my car, hoping I would not run into the kindly Elizabeth and Alexander and Theodore. Then I drove away slowly, on a narrow road following dangerous seaside cliffs. I never looked to the left or to the right. I gazed straight ahead at the road because those cliffs had lost their beauty...
But you know what? I bagged Zivitsa...
