Mount Chortiatis

The path starts at the upper edge of Chortiatis on the uphill side of the road to the antenna park. The first section is cut into steep rock among head-high kermes oaks, with Thessaloniki and the Thermaic Gulf behind you; it passes the Afanos clearing (where an effigy of Judas is burnt on Good Friday) and the shallow Arkoudotrypa cave, then climbs through oak scrub into beech forest. From the old walnut flat remnants of a cobbled path built in 1915 by Indian soldiers of the Allied army to reach an observation post on the summit lead on; beside it are stone water chambers that once supplied Thessaloniki. At about 900 m in deep beech forest the trail reaches the ice-making sites: collapsed ice stores (magazia) and flat earthen freezing floors (bares) around Pente Aderfia and Kria Vrysi, whose spring has dried up. The last ice-maker retired in 1956. At Megali Petra (about 970 m) there is a view of Lake Koroneia; the trail then joins the dirt road from the antenna park and runs through chestnut forest to the SEO 'Nikos Papadopoulos' refuge at Tzek Baktse (about 1,000 m). From the refuge a path climbs south-west through the forest, past the Scouts' spring at the foot of the summit cone, towards the top in 20–30 minutes. The summit, Kissos, is occupied by an Air Force radar station: you can go only as far as the fence, or to the open saddle and top of Vazoura (1,060 m) east of it, with views over Chalkidiki and the Thermaic Gulf. Return the same way, or by the road and the antenna park.