It's not until you've tiptoed right up to Zeus' doorstep, close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation of the gods, that things begin to get dicey.
A flight of rock steps, slanted downward like roof shingles and slickened by the swirling mist, traverses above an airy abyss and leads to the very pinnacle of Mount Olympus. The steps didn't look terribly difficult, but a careless stumble would almost surely be fatal. I hesitated and asked myself, once again, just how badly I wanted to come face to face with the ancients' gods — or my own.
Mount Olympus is such a fixture of mythology, such a metaphor, that some people are surprised to learn it's a real place. Actually, it's several places: Over the years, the Greeks have appended the name to at least four different mountains. But it's generally agreed that the original Mount Olympus, the legendary home of Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite and the gang, is the 9,538-foot-high peak — the highest in all of Greece — that rises almost straight out of the Aegean Sea, 80 miles southwest of Thessaloniki. Because the ancient games were held in honor of the god who ruled from this mountaintop, at a site named after his home, they're called the Olympics.
Mountains this lofty, this close to the sea, tend to wreak their own mischief with the weather, and a soaring limestone needle like Olympus makes a pretty unbeatable lightning rod. It's not hard to imagine ancient Greeks watching bolt after bolt crackling around the summit and cowering at Zeus'wrath.
No mortal stood on its summit until 1913, which is remarkable, considering that Mont Aiguille in France was ascended and searched for angels the year Columbus set sail for India, and the fearsome Matterhorn, a much more difficult peak thought by some to be the lair of flame-snorting dragons, had been conquered in 1865. Prudence, rather than superstition, was probably responsible: For years, Olympus' rugged lower slopes had been the hideout of revolutionaries and bandits. One would-be climber in 1910 was captured at gunpoint and held for ransom.
Today the bandits are all gone, a well-maintained trail ascends almost all the way to the top, and there's a surprisingly comfortable mountain hut halfway up. Who of us, given a chance to peek inside the throne room of the mountain gods, would turn it down?
So it was that my wife, Jeri, and I shouldered our packs and set off up a steep trail above the village of Litohoro on a warm September morning. (This, it should be pointed out, took place 13 years ago. But most of the salient details are still true.)
We stopped for the night at the Spilios Agapitos Refuge, perched at the edge of a cliff with forever views of the wine-dark Aegean. Inside, a fire was crackling in the hearth, and the longtime hut-keeper, Kostas Zolatas, a figure almost as legendary on Olympus as Zeus himself, handed us steaming mugs of tea made from herbs he'd picked on the mountainside. That night, long after dark, he headed out into the blackness with a flashlight and flask of tea to rescue a lost hiker.
In the morning, another couple of hours of uphill hiking brought us to the subsidiary summit, and there, towering above us like a fortress, was the main peak of Mykitas. Greek legend said a gate of clouds, tended by a goddess named Seasons, opened to permit the passage of the gods to Earth. Sure enough, misty clouds swirled around the topmost pinnacle of Olympus.
Another legend said seven steps led up to the throne of Zeus, and I wondered if the slippery, down-sloping rock steps in front of me could be the ones. Officially, they're known as the Kaki Skala, the bad steps; unofficially — and perhaps inevitably — they're called the Stairway to Heaven. Below was nothing but fresh air, dropping away for more than 1,000 feet into a chasm called the Cauldron. If any ancient Greeks had summoned the courage to venture this far, it's easy to see why they would have turned back here.
There were far more than seven steps, and it took me half an hour of nervous scrambling to climb them. Finally, I poked my head over the last rise and found myself staring at the mythic abode of the gods. There was no sign of Zeus or his family, no throne of polished black marble, no bowls of ambrosia or nectar. The summit was barely spacious enough to park a minivan on.
Still, it was an intoxicating place. All of Greece fell away at my feet. Off on the northwest horizon I could see the sawtooth ridge of the Pindos Mountains, the frontier with Albania. Nine thousand feet below me, the Aegean sparkled.
On the highest rock I spotted a metal object, blackened and partially melted. It was a survey marker, zapped almost beyond recognition by thousands of lightning strikes. I scanned the heavens, but no dark clouds were forming. Just the same, I thought it best to leave pronto, before an angry Zeus returned home and caught me trespassing.
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