JOURNAL
ROUTE REPORT
ROUTE REPORT
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1 MAY 2025
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12 MIN READ
THE PINDUS SPINE: THREE DAYS IN THE NORTH
We started before first light in Metsovo, headlamps cutting through damp pine. By the second ridgeline the trees had dropped away and the Pindus opened up: grey limestone, occasional snow, no trails.
We started before first light in Metsovo, headlamps cutting through damp pine. By the second ridgeline the trees had dropped away and the Pindus opened up: grey limestone, occasional snow, no trails. Three days, two bivouacs, and a ridge traverse that no map had prepared us for.
The Pindus is not a place most people think of when they think of Greek mountains. Olympus takes all the attention — Greece’s highest, mythologised, well-trafficked. The Pindus is something else. It runs the spine of the northwest, from Albania south through Epirus, and for long sections it is simply empty. No villages, no paths, no mobile signal. The kind of terrain that requires you to navigate.
DAY ONE: METSOVO TO THE FIRST RIDGE
The town of Metsovo sits at 1,160m in a fold of the Pindus range, accessible by road but feeling genuinely alpine. Stone buildings, slate roofs, the permanent smell of woodsmoke. We left at 05:00 to maximise daylight on the upper section, following a shepherds’ track that deteriorates quickly above the treeline.
By 08:30 we were on the first proper ridge, at approximately 1,800m. The wind was coming from the northwest with enough force to require leaning into it on exposed sections. The panorama north showed more ridge — ridge after ridge, grey-green and endless — with no indication of human presence beyond the track we had climbed.
Three ridges in, you stop counting. The Pindus just keeps going.
DAY TWO: THE HIGH SECTION
The second day was the crux of the traverse — a sustained ridge walk above 2,000m with a section of unexpectedly technical scrambling near Flega at approximately 2,160m. The rock here is loose in a way that demands respect: every placement tested, every section of steep ground treated as if the next hold might not hold. This is not technical climbing, but it is not walking either.
We bivouacked at 1,940m in a natural hollow that offered shelter from the northwest wind. Temperature dropped to approximately -2°C overnight. The stars were extraordinary — no light pollution within fifty kilometres in any direction. We ate cold food and went to sleep early.
DAY THREE: DESCENT
The descent to the Aoos valley was long, loose, and exactly right. Eight hours from the high bivouac to the road, much of it on terrain that offered no path and required continuous reading of the slope. By the time we reached the valley, our legs had nothing left and our minds were unusually quiet. That particular quality of exhaustion — total, clean, without residue — is what we come here for.
The Pindus traverse as we did it is not a route for people new to mountain navigation. No marked trails, variable weather, loose terrain throughout. But for people with the fitness and skill to operate in remote terrain, it offers something rare: the experience of moving through a mountain environment that has not been optimised for you.
