It is a sunny autumn day at the site of Gortsia, near Olympus. It is 9 a.m. and Theodore Dosis’ mules are loaded for the long ascent to the Plateau des Muses. They have to cover a distance of 12 kilometers and an altitude difference of 1,800 meters through dense forests and on alpine slopes, to reach the Kakkalos and Apostolidis refuges.
But this is no ordinary day. The mules do not carry, as usual, what is necessary for the operation of the mountain refuges, but scientific equipment – ice drill, generator, piping, sensors, waterproof collectors, computers. “What else are you going to make me wear?” jokes Theodore Dosis to his old acquaintance, Michalis Styllas.
First on Olympus
Pioneer of the great scientific mission which begins, Michalis Styllas guides the loading. He is the man who changed the situation on Olympus. The geologist, particularly active in mountain sports, made himself known to the general public as one of the nine mountaineers who took part in the first purely Greek expedition to Everest, in 2004. He then chose to stay permanently at the Kakkalos refuge, at 2,650 meters, contributing to the revival of traditional climbing and developing mountain tourism on Olympus.
His interest in the eternal snows of Olympus led him to study the evolution of glaciers in the Paleolithic period. [il y a environ trois millions d’années] to the present day, as part of a postdoctoral work at the Academy of Athens completed in 2019.
For the past four years, he has participated in the ambitious Vanishing Glaciers research project of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. [en Suisse]. He visited 15 countries and climbed 35 mountain ranges, identified bacterial life in more than 170 glacier-fed rivers and streams. He is now responsible for the first major interdisciplinary expedition ever carried out on the mythical Greek mountain.
A multifaceted research project
The snow hole of Olympus, as the unexplored cave of the Zonaria site is called, is the object of study of an international project which aims to represent the paleoclimate and atmospheric circulation in the south-east of the Europe. The main objective is to study the permafrost of the cave to reconstruct the evolution of the climate, ideally over the last five thousand years. The team is led by speleologist, paleoclimatologist and geomorphologist Aurel Persoiu, from the Romanian Academy of Sciences, together with Michalis Styllas and other internationally renowned researchers, thus broadening the horizons of this unique project for Greece.
This work is not limited to the scientific data that will emerge. As Michalis Styllas explains, the aim is to connect climate change with history and culture. “Homer describes Olympus as ‘brilliant’. Did men see, at the time, the glaciers that were on the mountain? It falls 15,000 lightning strikes per season. Is this how the gods landed here? It’s like a puzzle that, when the pieces of science, mythology and history come together, will make it possible not only to understand what happened in these ancient civilizations, but also why. The answers will also shed light on the présent”, he thinks.
A scientific laboratory at 2,650 meters
In mountaineering circles, Michalis Styllas is described as the man who descended from the plateau of Olympus to Litochoro in an hour and a half to buy a fruit juice and is r