The highest mountain of Greece with an altitude of 2917 meters, which is also the mountain of the Gods, is Olympus. Apart of the hiking opportunities, it also has a few beautiful canyons. One of them is “Orlias” which offers two canyoning circuits, a long and a short one. In this post we followed the short circuit. The team was organized by Hellas Canyon. It was a nice -and humid- day, we met at the meeting point and started walking up the trail towards the canyon. That same trail would take you towards the mountain shelters if you were to go for the summit.
After a nice hike we reached the starting point. Had a short rest and geared up. Had a fast revision on our techniques and wetted the ropes. It was such a great and refreshing feeling to be inside the cold water and I was getting really excited for the first waterfalls and rappels. A smaller more experienced team had started earlier entering the canyon higher up going for the long circuit. We waited for them to join us and continue together.
Further down the canyon we reached our first slide. You throw your bag down the basin and then you can either slide down the waterfall or jump!
Orlias canyon was really enjoyable and lots of fun because it offered many places for water games and jumps, like the waterfall in the above photo. After you rappelled down, you could climb up the rocks on the right and jump down again!
At some point the team leaders created a “flying fox”, we would fly backwards and facing the sky splashing ourselves in the water! A canyoning rope is suspended horizontally and then you ride it using your canyoning gear, going down to the water. It’s like a form of over-head ziplining 🙂
Our last spot and exit point was a waterfall close to the car park, due to the easy accessibility there were quite a few people enjoying the scenery and bathing in the natural pool. I wonder what they thought, when our small neoprene group appeared out of nowhere at the top of the waterfall and started jumping and rappelling down…
The whole experience was so much fun, once we finished I wouldn’t mind hiking up back to the starting point and start all over again! The water was very clean, the landscapes stunning and the whole team, from the team leaders to my fellow canyoners, were all wonderful. I left that day dreaming of more canyoning!!
*All photos taken with a waterproof Nikon Coolpix AW130.
Additional information
GPS coordinates for places in this post, click on them to be redirected to the exact point in google maps. Click on the names to be redirected to their official websites (if applicable).
Hellas Canyon website: https://hellascanyon.com/en/
Carpark, start of the trail to go up and close to the waterfall which marks the end of the canyon: 40°09’04.2″N 22°26’20.8″E
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