Orlias canyoning - Olympus, Greece (2017)

The mountain of the Gods in Greece, Olympus, apart of the hiking opportunities has also 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. The same trail takes you towards the shelters in order to go for the summit.

Start of the trail towards the canyon

All nice and green on the way

Streams

Natural springs

Sign towards the canyon

After a nice hike we reached the starting point. Had a short rest and geared up. It was such a great and refreshing feeling to be inside the cold water and was getting really excited for the 1st waterfalls and rappels.

Starting point, gearing up after a short rest

Wetting the ropes

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.

Using the rope to slide down slowly

One of our first beautiful rappels

Floating and enjoying the scenery

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!

Throwing the bag and getting ready to slide or jump!

An experienced canyoner, had gone through this specific canyon at least 50 times!

At the edge under the mountain of the Gods

Secured and going towards the rappel

Taking a rest after going down the waterfall

Rappeling down

Going down one more waterfall

Taking a short break

The view from the top of the waterfall...

...and the view from the bottom after having gone down

This canyon was really enjoyable and lots of fun because it offered many places for water games and jumps like the waterfall above. After you rappel down you could climb up the rocks on the right and jump down again!

This young 16 years old lad was a full on canyoner, had already his own gear and did some impressive back flip jumps!

Some parts of the canyon were narrow enough for the sun not to reach us

I could easily spend hours admiring the beautiful nature

Big smiles!

At some point the team leaders created a flying fox, we would fly backwards and facing the sky splashing ourselves in the water!

Flying fox!

Getting read for one more jump

These two were the two stars of the day performing non stop back flip jumps

I could only imagine the powers of nature when the weather turned bad around there

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 neopren group appeared out of nowhere at the top of the waterfall and started jumping and rappeling down...

Arriving at our last waterfall to the amazement of the bathers below

Our last waterfall of the day...

Joining the bathers and enjoying the water one final time

The whole experience was so much fun, once we finished I wouldn't mind hiking up again 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!!

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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