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Geology
Psiloritis, the green mountain of the Homeric years, with the numerous caves that fed Gods and hosted battles, with the wildness of life and nature but at the same time with the echo of lyre across the mountain, it surely isn’t a random place.
One could say that Mother Nature intentionally endowed this place with every form of ornament in order to grow Cretan born Zeus. High tops with beautiful plateaus, coombs with fountains crystallized from the melted snow, forests that slowly obtain a different glory and amplitude, stone as if it was ordered to make shepherds' shelters (mitato), gorges as the doors of the great mountain, caves as the shelters of wild animals and the rebellious insurgents of the mountains (Chainides). There is inspiration everywhere on the occasion of Cretan poetry (mandinada).
If the visitors search for the clew that links all the characteristics of Psiloritis, they will end up in this land. This is the land that popped out of the Mediterranean millions of years ago, with hammer-dressed rocks from the constant collision of Africa and Europe. The movements of these two lithospheric plates still define the fate of this land. Due to the earthquakes, the mountains of Crete, along with Psiloritis, constantly gain height.
Within 5 million years, Psiloritis gained approximately 1500 meters of height and became the tallest mountain of Crete and one of the tallest mountains of the Mediterranean. And as people say: "...the wind always blows with rage towards the highest top...", this way Psiloritis has the marks of weather all over it. The water, the cold weather and the snow dug deeply into the rocks that grew higher and created gorges and unfathomable caves. At the same time, the breaches, these cuts on the land, marked the difference between Psiloritis and its brother Kouloukonas -even though Kouloukonas never reached Psiloritis height it resembles the sacred mountain in many ways- and created deep valleys that surrounds it.
