As long as I can remember, I’ve always had a fascination with mountains.  Whenever I see one the first thought that inevitably pops into my head is “I want to climb that mountain!”  Sadly in most cases I do not actually get the opportunity, for one reason or another.  I’d like to believe the desire stems from my greek ancestors who lived in the mountains of Greece, and so on some subconscious level I long to go back to my roots.

When we arrived in Ios our first day, the view was striking.  Small mountains dotted the landscape, villages built on the sides of some of the smaller ones.  The white and blue buildings perfectly capturing the picturesque post-card image that we’ve all so often seen of Greece.  As we headed down to the beach for the first time, that same thought kept forming in my head “I want to climb these mountains!”  Now normally I would just suppress these thoughts, yielding them to fanciful thinking, but it was different now, I was on a once in a lifetime trip, had a lot of time to spend here on the island, and now actually had some rock climbing experience from the previous year.  I decided then that before I left Ios I would conquer one of the mountains.

I talked with my two travel friends, Cam and Billy, about it, and they showed a bit of interest but definitely not the passion that I was hoping for and that I had myself.  I knew I’d be attempting it alone.  So, surveying the mountains while we lounged about on the white sand by the crystal clear water of the Mediterranean, I chose one and mentally mapped out a route.  You can see which one I chose here (see the poorly drawn arrow), it has small radio tower at the summit, so I would always know what to look for during my ascent and Billy and Cam would know where I was headed in case anything should happen.  I decided that I would make the climb in a couple of days.

The morning (*cough2:00pmcough*) of our third day on the island, I awoke and knew that it would be that day.  I donned my Tiva sandals, put on a touch of sunscreen, stuffed my camera, a 1.5 litre bottle of water and my first aid kit into my backpack and headed out.  Jumping on my little scooter, I zipped down the windy road to the beach which was near the base of the mountain.  Parking my bike I started walking.

This was actually one of the scarier parts of the trip as I had to travel through some residential properties to get on to the actual mountain.  Having been chased by dogs two days prior, I was not looking forward to a similar experience, so I maintained a constant state of weariness.  Thankfully the worst that happened was a donkey slowly clambering towards me as I passed it.  However, its leg was tied with a rope to a peg in the ground so I knew I didn’t really have to worry.  At last passing by all the houses I reached my mountain.  Checking my watch, 3:30pm,  I started climbing.

I was given a rather nasty surprise very quickly.  Almost all the bushes that covered the mountain were thorn bushes.  Now these are no regular thorn bushes.  The bushes themselves are extremely stiff and the thorns are about an inch long and razor sharp.  It was essentially similar to having thousands of pins sticking out from a bush, just waiting to draw my blood.  Suddenly shorts and sandals didn’t seem like the best idea, but it was too late to go back.  My path was quickly being dictated by the openings between these thorny bushes as it was impossible to walk through them.  As the hillside was also used by greek farmers for their goats to graze in, their small paths often aided me in traversing certain areas.

Dividing up the land were stone walls created by stacking flat rocks on each other until they were a sufficient height.  You can see a picture of them here.  What was amazing is that these walls were miles upon miles in length, along the side of the mountains through some pretty intense terrain.  It would have taken very long to build all of them all, and so much labour to find all the proper stones and make it all fit properly.  The quality of the walls was incredible too!  There were several sections of the climb where I had to actually scamper across the top of the wall to continue my ascent as there was no other alternative.

The climb had many interesting aspects.  Although I tried my best to avoid the thorny bushes, I was still being stuck and scraped.  I was continuously stopping to pull out thorns from my exposed feet and legs.  After a while I got used to it and would just ignore the pain.  At one point I looked at my feet to see three one inch needles sticking out of my left foot.  The wounds however were similar to a pinprick you might get on your finger by a doctor so they do not bleed for very long or that much.  I came to both respect and resent those damned bushes.  They did however make for some interesting technical parts.  Often I was jumping from one exposed rock to another over the bushes with the cost of a mistake being a hell of a lot of pain.

The sounds of grasshoppers filled the air, but as I approached they would quickly silence and only continue once I had passed a fair distance away.  To my annoyance, a few small flies also accompanied me on my trip, but overall they were not too much of a bother.  Small lizards always dashed away when I approached, my eyes only catching the quick flash as they scurried deep into a bush or underneath a rock.

A few times I had to jump across a chasm which was always a little precarious.  Thankfully I managed to do those successfully and am still able to write about it.  Several technical climbing parts presented themselves as well.  They were probably the equivalent to about a 5.9 – 5.10 if you know the rating for rock climbing gyms.  They definitely provided some excellent challenges.

The views and scenery as I ascended was incredible.  Often I would just stop and admire, sometimes taking a few pictures.

I finally reached the top after about two hours of  walking, running, climbing, scampering and jumping.  It was worth it.  I stayed up there a good twenty minutes, just relaxing and drinking some of my water.  You can check out the view here and here and see the beach where I started.  Here’s another picture taken looking the other way off the mountain, it gave quite the view as well.

After getting my fill of the view and regaining my energy, I began my descent.  I took a different route down that was mostly through a flood trough, that probably filled up during heavy rainfalls.  There were less of the thorny bushes, as there were mainly just very large, water-worn rocks.  I was often jumping down distances of 7-8 feet and climbing down the rock faces of longer drops.  The decent took about an hour and half and had it’s own unique challenges.  It went mostly without incident however and was a bit more relaxing than the ascent.

Finally reaching the base of the mountain again, I stopped and looked back.  Smiling to myself, I wondered if my ancestors would be proud.  Hundreds of years later, a city boy from halfway around the world at last went back to his roots.