Snowboarder Magazine

Acropolis Pow

Tuesday, 05 May 2009 00:00

Greece is known as an ancient and beautiful land, home to The Acropolis and the Olympics, and full of white domed churches, exotic islands with cliff-top villages, spectacular azure-blue seas and holiday beaches. Not surprisingly, it is less known as a snowboard destination. But, with mountain ranges pushing 3000m, and twenty sunshine-filled ski resorts scattered across the mainland, open from December to April, Greece offers a cheap and unique snowboarding adventure for the intrepid shredder.

I can't remember where exactly, but somewhere I'd heard about skiing in Greece, and with a whole heap of googling and emailing, Gus St Leon, Jason Currie, Will Kendall and myself found ourselves at Athens airport in January with a loose plan, a few contacts...and a whole heap of snowboard gear. First stop was the barren ruins of the Temple of Zeus, followed by a trek up to the Acropolis (which she pained to tell us just meant "high ground" in ancient Greek) to the Parthenon and Temple of Nike (I was disappointed to see no giant red swoosh, or even hordes of sweatshop workers that Amnesty International keep on harping about!).

The little resort of North Selas is 8km from the town of Elatohori, and with a top elevation of 1800m, a brand new double chair and two t-bars, we knew were weren't going to find epic alpine conditions. The winter had been lean for snowfalls so far, and much of the resort was a dusting of snow on top of dirt, but coming from Oz, we knew how to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. After a couple of runs scoping for photo opportunities we saw a crazy pony-tailed guy recklessly fanging around on a snowmobile up and down the one and only main ski run, then doing donuts between the picnic tables and families outside the day lodge. We'd started to build up a hit onto a beat up old car when Crazy-Guy zoomed over to us and we thought we were about to be shut down...until we saw his ear to ear grin. Stelios (who was sipping a beer and sitting nearby wondering why aussie snowboarder would want to slide a car's roof) translated for us: Crazy-Guy was in fact the owner of the resort and had placed a beaten-up old Ford Laser on the side of the main run as a feature, to either jump on skis, snowboard, or snowmobile! He was stoked to see Jason style out a few lipslides on the rusty roof, took a few photos besides me, and then proceeded to shout us a meal and a couple beers at the bar for our efforts. What service! He was typical of the loose, can-do attitude we found in Greece: a little bit crazy, a helluva lot of fun, and willing to help us out with whatever we wanted.

Vasilitsa is the real deal: with an altitude of between 1650 and 2200 at the summit, it has some legitimate above-the-treeline alpine bowls, gladed tree-runs, cliffs, cornices and even some powder-filled steeps and chutes! It reminded me a lot of a slightly smaller Alpine Meadows (Lake Tahoe), with the well spaced 1000-year old black pines and great terrain.

That evening after touring round Vasilitsa we spied some small rails next to a lodge beside the top carpark. As the sun began to set the guys got into the swing of things on the fun little setup, and before long a huge throng of onlookers was around and cheering us on late into the evening. Apparently, this lodge was the local snowboard bar/cafe/backpackers, and they had set up a couple of small features out the front which they could watch from the bar. We found out that there isn't too much of a "scene" for snowboarding, nor any real terrain parks in Vasilitsa or Greece, but that the love for shredding still runs strong with the bold few. The guys were amazed to think we had come all the way from Australia for a magazine trip to Greece, and to warm us up after the cold of night they shouted us a couple of beers and some toasted sandwiches inside! I could certainly get used to this sort of treatment.

After our second bluebird day at Vasilitsa we had several hours of driving to do that evening back down south to the famous town of Delphi. Once again Jason was enlisted to push the van at warp speed while I navigated (thankfully a lot of the way would be major highway, making it less likely I‚Äôd get us lost again!) and we only paused once as the impressive monoliths of Meteora loomed up out of the dusk. If you've seen Roger Moore in James Bond‚ "For Your Eyes Only" you may remember the amazing ancient monasteries built atop huge granite cliffs and mountains and only accessible by vertical rope winch (to ensure peaceful reflection and worship, I suppose). Truly astounding.

Parnassos reminded me a lot of the front valley of Cardrona: a small gondola up from the main carpark and a few lifts (13 in all across the resort) fanning out from the day lodge across wide open, rolling and treeless runs. Being so much further south and close to the sea, there was nowhere near as much snow as Vasilitsa, but with an altitude between 1600 and 2200m Parnassos can get some nice snowfalls each year. There would be some steeper lines you could hike to, but it was a little "low tide" for our liking with quite a few rocks poking out. However, we still managed to find a couple small powder slashes in the shadows, even though it hadn't snowed for a long time. But what really caught our attention was a nice "urban" transfer/gap down a staircase on the side of the day lodge and out over another snow-covered stairway.  Once again, a lunchtime crowd was pressed to the window to watch our crazy antics as Jason flew off the side the building and I snapped away.

Greece was such an amazing place to visit: certainly not exactly what I expected, and in many ways much more than I expected. We drove the length and breadth of mainland Greece in only a handful of days. We were all blown away by the friendliness and enthusiasm we encountered from everyone we met, and felt privileged to not only see some amazing ancient sites and beautiful scenery, but to snowboard in a country so far off the traditional shred radar

PHOTOS: Sean Radich