Monday we drove from Kastrakis (the village where we'd stayed near Meteora) north to Monodendri, which is one of the trailhead towns for hiking the Vikos Gorge.
Along the way we stopped to walk around the walled city (from the Byzantine era) of Ionannina.
We arrived in Monodendri late in the afternoon, and had time to walk down to a monastery which looks over the gorge. It's an impressive sight.
Tuesday early we set off on our hike. From Monodendri the trail descends steeply to the Vikos River. I had thought the next several miles following the river would be fairly flat, but the trail was quite challenging. Many short climbs and descents, and lots of scrambling over rocks. In several places there were fixed ropes to help with trickier spots. More than half way through the hike a thunderstorm passed through, so we added rain and slippery rocks to the trail's challenges. With all the constant up and down, we had about 9000 feet of vertical (ascending and descending) over about 8 1/2 miles of walking. Below the village of Vikos we climbed back out of the gorge, where Panos from our hotel was waiting to drive us the 30 minutes back to Monodendri.
 |
| Starting out |
 |
| Beginning the climb out |
No comments:
Post a Comment