A Trip To The Summit Of Parnassus Mt. (Liakoura 2.457 m)
Parnassus is the mountain where the famous Delphi ancient site is located.
GPS information at the end of page
We went there when a 42ο C heat wave was dominating the largest part of the Greece. After visiting some ancient monuments of the northern foot of Parnassus, me, Vicky and our Transalp were ready to head for the summit.
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Parnassus is forested until the height of 1600m. This is the last tree view (taken near the Fterolakka winter ski center at 1800m). |
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trip details like road condition and the degree of difficulty of the
last part (trail) to the summit were almost unknown. Fortunately, we had
an excellent GPS compatible map of the mountain. I created some critical
waypoints, so we were sure we had nothing to afraid, regarding to the
path. Of course, we took a compass with us. As we already knew from the map, the "road" from Fterolakka was unpaved. |
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This is a panoramic view of the first quarter of the unpaved part of the trip. |
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This was the toughest part of the trip. Although not that tough. For a few hundred meters,
a rather steep track that wasn't in perfect condition. But neither too bad. The real danger was a sliding and falling off the narrow track to the downward slope to the right.. |
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Yikes! These aren't trees, nor black stones, nor humans. This is a flock of goats resting in the middle of the track. No shepherd around. Prepare for the sheepdogs! |
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Luckily, the dogs were lazing somewhere in the lower part of the slope. Under that sun, they dismissed any thought to deal with us. Then, we reached the base of the summit at 2.285m (summit is the left peak in the image). Time to leave TA alone and start hiking. |
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This is another nearby summit (Gerontovrachos 2.369m). |
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Poor lonely Transalp! It is the black "goat" in the center of the image (you must enlarge the image to be able to see it). |
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Stones, stones, stones. And a lot of beautiful black small butterflies (not seen in the photo). |
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Some views from the top. Unfortunately, atmosphere wasn't crystal clear, again. After a
short rain it would be fine for taking pictures, but it wouldn't be that fine for the track and
the bike! The ambient temperature was about 15oC. The echo from the falling stones was like shootings.
Liakoura summit coordinates: N 38.3216204, E 22.3738388 (datum European 1950) |
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To the left, a graphical representation of the track log (created with the freeware Waypoint+) for the unpaved track is shown. You can also download the combined waypoint and tracklog file (36 KB). It is a comma delimited ASCII file, compatible with the Waypoint+. Using this program, you can upload the file to any Garmin GPS (datum is European 1950). Since the file is ASCII, you can also paste the waypoint data in other similar programs. |