Days 106-107 Fallasana beach- Mygero Refuge-Knossos Parking Lot

On Friday morning, we said goodbye to Jürgen and headed towards the Idagebirge. Hiking to Psiloritis (Crete's highest mountain) was still on my to-do list. The annoying issue of refilling gas came up again. We ordered it at an office in Rethymnon and then had to drive 18km to a mountain village for the refill. A nice Pakistani guy took care of the refill, but we had to drive back to the office to pay. Let's not dwell on it 😉. Now we had to drive up to about 1600m because we wanted to stay overnight at the parking lot where the hike would start the next morning. We arrived at the top just before dark and in drizzling rain. It was clear that the night would be cold, but the hot water bottles helped once again.

This morning at 7:15, after having breakfast, I set off in moonlight. Burki was supposed to meet me around 10 or 11:00. It felt really nice to ascend towards the summit in the fresh air of the early morning. The path led steadily upwards. Eventually, the sun started to appear. For quite a while, I had the sun on one side and the moon on the other. After 2:15h, I reached Mount Psiloritis at 2454m. Today, I was the first one there and I had about 15 minutes all to myself. It felt absolutely amazing once again. The weather was great, being up so high with a view of almost the entire Crete, and the falcons flying above me. Thank you for these moments.

On the descent, around the lower third, Burki met me. He had chosen an observation point at 2240m, which he was aiming for. Okay, then we walked back up together. At some point, we turned left instead of right towards the summit. Burki was the hero today, as he had about 700 meters of steep and rocky ground in total. Going downhill was more difficult than going uphill. We're both exhausted tonight. I can feel the 1330m ascent and almost 14km in total.