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Sierra Club Bulletin 



precipices. Thousands of feet below we could see, through rifts in 

 the clouds, the valleys and wooded hills of the ancient Pieria. The 

 distant view was almost entirely obscured, but the splendor of the 

 swirling mists about us, the tremendous chasms, the glittering snow- 

 fields, and the thronging peaks close at hand, were more than com- 

 pensation. 



We were uncertain at the time, and we are still in doubt, whether 

 the summit that we attained was higher than the rocky peaks to the 

 northeast, which are seen at the right of the photograph. At all events, 

 the difference in altitude cannot be much more than a hundred feet. 

 We followed along the ridge that forms the skyline of the picture to the 

 point where it drops off abruptly to the right. Here a narrow knife- 

 edge of treacherous snow runs out to the base of the huge rock towers. 

 We made no attempt to pass this point as we had neither the time nor 

 the strength. So without further exploration we turned back, and at 

 one-thirty o'clock began our descent, scarcely less arduous than the 

 upward journey, as we were obliged to travel rapidly in order to get 

 down before night-fall. We reached the monastery of Hagia Trias at 

 five-thirty o'clock and passed the night there. 



In the morning we bade goodbye to the kind monks and made our 

 way to the monastery of Hagios Antonios at Demirades. On the fol- 

 lowing days we continued our journey through a wild, rugged country, 

 by way of the villages of Servia (or Selfidje), and Verria (the ancient 

 Berea or Berroea), to Salonica, arriving the fourth of May. From 

 Salonica we took a Russian steamer, touching at Mt. Athos, where 

 Phoutrides left me to continue his travels through Macedonia and 

 Greece, while I proceeded to Constantinople and thence returned to the 

 United States. 



Although Mt. Olympus is perhaps the most widely celebrated mountain 

 in all literature, it has rarely been visited and has never been, thoroughly 

 explored. Until the nineteenth century its height was generally sup- 

 posed to be about 6,000 feet, an estimate that had stood since the time 

 when it was reported by Plutarch to have been measured by Xenagoras. 

 In 1831 Captain Copeland of the British Navy made a trigonometrical 

 observation, establishing the height at 9,754 feet or 2,973 meters. This 

 is the height given on current English charts. The maps of the 

 Austrian Military Geographic Institute, edition of 191 1, give the height 

 as 2,985 meters or 9,794 feet. 



That the high peaks were visited in former times is proved by 

 scattered bricks and pieces of broken pottery that have been found 

 upon them, but the first attempt at an ascent of which we have been 

 able to find any record was by the English diplomatist, David Urquhart, 

 in 1830. The French archaeologist, Leon Heuzey, made two ascents 

 to the region of the high peaks in 1856; he was followed in 1862 by Dr. 

 Heinrich Barth, best known for his explorations in Northern Africa; 

 in 1865 the Rev. Henry Fanshawe Tozer climbed one of the high peaks ; 

 there is mention in a French guide book of an ascent in 1869 by a 



