Christos Kakkalos

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Christos Kakkalos
The highest peaks of Mount Olympus. Right Mytikas (2918 m), left Stefani (2909 m)
The Plateau of the Muses with the Christos Kakkalos mountain hut, in the background the Stefani summit (2909 m)

Christos Kakkalos ( Greek Χρήστος Κάκκαλος , born July 13, 1882 in Litochoro ; † April 12, 1976) was a Greek mountain guide. In 1913 he led the expedition of the Swiss Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas and is considered to be the first to climb the Mytikas, the highest peak of Mount Olympus (2918.80 m) in Greece .

Life

After attending school for three years, he helped his family with work and hunting. The Kakkalos family owned a hut called Paliokaliva (Greek Παλαιοκάλυβα, old hut) on the east side of Mount Olympus. They worked as lumberjacks and transported the wood to the water-powered sawmills in Prionia. Kakkalos got to know the mountains as a child and hunted chamois as far as the summit region.

In the summer of 1913 he set off with the Swiss Baud-Bovy and Boissonnas on an expedition to the peaks of Mount Olympus, and on August 2, 1913, the group managed the first ascent of Mytikas. Further ascents took place in July 1919, 1921, and September 1927 with 105 people taking part. In 1921 he led the Swiss topographer Marcel Kurz , who is considered the first to climb the Olympus summit Stefani (2909 m), and the Swiss engineer Fritz Kuhn. In 1931 he led Daniel Baud-Bovy again with a group of mountaineers.

Until 1932 he stayed overnight with the groups he led in the Paliokaliva. In 1930 the foundation stone was laid for the first mountain hut on Olympus, the hut Spilios Agapitos. ( Location ) In 1937 he was appointed the official mountain guide for Mount Olympus by the Greek Mountaineering Association. He led mountaineers, geologists, botanists, ambassadors, politicians, artists and tourists. In 1971-73 he climbed the Mytikas. The last time he stood on the summit, he was 91 years old.

Christos Kakkalos died on April 12, 1976.

In 1984 a mountain hut on the Plateau of the Muses (2680 m) was named after him. ( Location )

First ascent of the Mytikas

On July 28, 1913, the Swiss Daniel Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas reached Litochoro (approx. 400 m). They hired the woodcutters Christos Kakkalos and Nikos Bistikos to lead them to the summit of Mount Olympus. The next day they started the climb. Around noon they reached the monastery of Agios Dionysios (820 m) and from there went on to Petrostrouga (1940 m) and stayed there overnight. On July 30th they reached the Plateau of the Muses (approx. 2600 m) and climbed the summits Profitis Elias and Toumba. With the peaks of Mytikas and Stefani in mind, they decided to descend again and spent the night in a lumberjack's hut (probably in the Paliokaliva) near today's Spilios Agapitos mountain hut (2040 m). On July 31, they wanted to break off their project and started their way back towards Litochoro. During the descent, they changed their minds and stayed at Prionia (1100 m). On August 1st, they climbed back up to the woodcutter's hut.

On the morning of August 2, 1913, the two Swiss, their guides and two shepherds, who were hired to carry the heavy photographic equipment, left the woodcutter's hut towards the summit region. It was raining, cold and foggy. The two shepherds and the guide Nikos Bistikos stayed behind on the way.

When the trio had climbed the supposed summit, when the cloud cover tore open they realized that they had been wrong when they saw the Mytikas above them. Kakkalos took the photo equipment and began the final ascent. A short time later, at 10:25 a.m., they climbed the summit of Olympus.

literature

  • Fred Boissonnas ΕΙΚΟΝΕΣ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΑΔΟΣ / IMAGES OF GREECE . Rizarios Foundation, Athens 2001, ISBN 960-85302-6-1 . (Texts in Greek and German)
  • Giannis Kiritsis Olympus, by Frédéric Boissonnas , Edition Dion-Olympus Municipality 2018, (texts in Greek and English)

Remarks

  1. Sound document: Biography Christos Kakkalos, speaker Sotiris Mastangas, Litochoro June 21, 2018 (Greek). Retrieved June 24, 2018 .
  2. Giannis Kiritsis Olympus, by Frédéric Boissonnas , Edition Dion-Olympus Municipality 2018, pages 27 to 31.