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Vikos Canyon in the Pindus Mountains of north-western Greece is considered the world's deepest relative to its width canyon, and it is amazing. We planned a 3 day hike in the Greek mountains to get there. Want to know how? Keep reading!
This hike was hard for us, partially because we miscalculated the weather, partially because we did now know why would a person need to use trekking poles (now we know) and partially because Lucy's fear of heights kicked in on the side of the mountain, but overall we were prepared, and we enjoyed ourselves a lot! The route is marked and very easy to follow. Ready? Let's go!
The Hike
First thing first, the stats:
40km | 4 days | Max alt: 2009m | Min alt: 444m | Ascent: 3274m | Descent: 2708m
The route:
We learned from past mistakes (see our hike in the Tatra mountains) and packed lighter.
I got me a new 45L backpack that was packed with 12kg, Lucy had her 40L backpack packed with 10kg. 6L of the total weight was water, which Lucy was not happy about, but I wouldn't change a thing (it was hot). We did not take a tent with us because we decided to save on luggage price, weight and, as we were in Greece in the end of June, we figured that sleeping bags should be enough.
Day 0 - Preparation
We started our journey in Thessaloniki, where we took a bus to Konitsa, a remote town close to the Albanian border. Once we arrived we instantly fell in love with the amazing mountain views.
Our plan was to pass the night there and start hiking the next day, and what a good decision that was! Just imagine how nice it is to chill around the pool with this view.
The food, as fitting to Greece, was amazing, and we even found local craft beer. Happy and full, we were ready to start our hike.
Day 1 - Point 1 to a bit after point 2 | 6km | 3hrs
Well, almost ready. We fell in love with the place so much that we decided to stay the whole day and chill at the pool, and do just a small part of the hike to reduce some distance from our originally planned first day. We left our hotel around 5pm and walked up until the Tzami Souleiman monastery ruins (point 2), since the start the way already has a great mountainous view. The monastery is free to enter and you can donate to the monks that take care of the place, only if you want. We looked around the monastery, and we asked whether we can sleep there. One of the monks explained that it's not possible to sleep on the territory of the monastery, but if we want to we can sleep just 30 meters outside the monastery, where there is also a water source in case we need it.
Sounds simple, right? The problem was he was speaking Greek, Lucy's Greek is better than mine but both of us are far from understanding anything, lucky for us we understood the parts about not sleeping in the monastery, and the water source, but we thought that he said 300 meters... So we passed right by the place that the monk meant and started ascending the mountain. After half an hour of walking it started to get dark, we found a flat piece of land to put our sleeping bags on and slept there.
Day 2 - Wherever we stopped to point 3 | 6km | 5hrs
We woke up more or less with the sun reaching us around 7am as it was heating up very fast, we started walking. After few minutes of walking we realized that it is the steepest ascent we did, and we already were tired. We found some good sticks in the forest and used them as trekking poles to help us walk. The first half of the walk was bearable, we had shade from the trees, and even tough we finished most of our water we found a water source to fill our bottles and refresh. I have to say that I don't think that water source is there all year long, so if you are crazier than us and you go in a warmer period than we did, you should probably bring even more water. The second half of the walk was exactly the opposite, we had exactly one tree to hide under for a whole 3 hours and this time we did not have a reliable water source to fill our bottles. Towards the end of the days walk we saw the top of the hill that we would end up at, and we saw some mountain goats jumping around. We decided to take the mountain goat way instead of the trail because we were warm and we wanted to finish faster. I'm not sure that the way was shorter, but I am positive that we made our life harder by going up the hill instead of gradually walking up around it. At around 3pm we arrived to lake Dragolimni (point 3) at the top, to find a marvelous view in front of us, and even a small glacier (in this heat, imagine). We chilled around the lake and refreshed ourselves by putting our feet in the extremely cold water.
We spent the rest of the evening there, watching our neighboring mountain goats jumping up and down rocks, and after we ate dinner we went to sleep.
Day 3 - Point 3 to point 7 | 18km | 8hrs
We woke up with the sun again and started walking. Our first stop was Astraka mountain hut, where we had breakfast and discovered that most of the people go up to the lake from the other side of the mountain, there are less trees to hide from the sun but the ascent is much less steep. We had breakfast, filled our bottles and continued walking. The rest of the way for the day was quite flat for the most of it, passing by fields with cows roaming free, between many mountains, and on the side of some of them. The hardest part of the day was just walking A LOT (and a few places that the fear of heights reminded that it is still there).
When Lucy searched for hiking trails in these Greek mountains a lot of old (and only) comments about it were mentioning how dangerous it is because there are plenty of holes to fall into because the trail is not marked. We hiked this hike in June 2021, the whole trails was marked, and I did not see any hole on the trail (there were some that I saw around the trails). Not to say there is no danger, but that someone did a very good job of marking the trail since those comments Lucy found online
By the end of the day we reached the Beloi viewpoint (point 7) to watch a sunset over the Vikos canyon.
The place was a bit more frequented by people as it is easily accessible by car. We waited all of them out and slept on the viewpoint as it was the flattest place we could find within half an hour of walk.
Day 4 - Point 7 to point 11 | 10km | 5.5hrs
We woke up early and left before any fellow tourists started to appear. Our first stop was the village Vradeto (point 8) where we had breakfast and enjoyed a different angle on the canyon. Then we continued to the next village, Kapesovo (point 10). On the way we passed through Bradetou (point 9), stairs that were built to ease the way between the two villages. We spent a good few hours in Kapesovo eating lunch and just chilling, as the map showed that we have around an hour and a half to go. Around 2pm we decided to start walking. This is the point that we crossed the canyon, meaning we went down to the river and back up from the other side. We had the shade of the trees for the whole way, but later on (after we finished) we discovered that it was the warmest day in Greece that year. It was extremely warm, we had enough water but the heat was still heavy. The way took us around 3 hours instead of the hour and a half that was shown on the map, and when we reached the river, we discovered that it is completely dry. By the end of it I had no place on my body that was not sweaty (I will save you the photos) but we managed to arrive to our finish point, the village Monodendri. The village itself is very nice, as in all villages around most of the houses are made completely out of stone (use what you have right?). We found out that there is a bus to Ioanina in the morning so we decided to stay the night. We discovered that the village is serving as a center for the hikers to start their hikes from, as there are many routes to take around the village.
The bus, of course, did not arrive. We managed to hitchhike to Ioanina to take a bus for our next stop.
Final thoughts
When Lucy was planning this hike there was not that much information about this area, this hike is a merge between three other hikes that she did manage to find information about. This is why it was important for me to put it out there, so someone else can do it.
What did you think about our hike of the deepest canyon, did it make you want to try out the mountains in Greece as well? Do it and tell us how it went!
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