It's easy to see why the ancient Greeks settled on Mount Olympus as the home of their pantheon: it's a geological freak, rising straight from the Aegean shore, far from Greece’s major mountain ranges, yet, at 2,918 metres, higher than all of them.

Olympus lies on the far southern frontier of historical Macedonia, haunt of Alexander the Great. In the entire Balkan pensinula only Musala, in Bulgarian Macedonia, is higher (and then only by seven metres).

I am in Litochoro, a village 300 metres above sea level that serves as the base for climbs into the modern national park that has been drawn around Olympus. I have come here in late September for a two-day ascent of the mountain - one up, one down - after warming up in neighbouring ex-Yugoslav Macedonia (about which more here.)

Day one begins with a glorious undulating trek through Enipeas, a verdant limestone canyon that ends at the foot of Olympus. The path meanders along a river that splashes down over rocks through the pine trees.

The tranquil five-hour walk is interrupted only by an odd grunting noise that drifts towards me as I explore an Orthodox shrine built into a cave in the canyon wall. The groans grow louder as I approach the nearby Orthodox monastery, perched above the river.

Closer, I spot a middle-aged Greek couple splayed against a boulder in the middle of the shallow river. They are noisily offering up a very public tribute to Eros, who is presumably looking on approvingly from Olympus's summit far above. The monks are turning a blind eye.

I tiptoe past the ecstatic twosome and shortly arrive at a makeshift taverna marking the end of a road from Litochoro. The road allows Olympus day-trippers to enter the heart of the national park while avoiding the stiff canyon hike.

I down a sturdy lunch of bean stew and Greek salad to fuel the afternoon stage: a three-hour climb to a mountain refuge eight hundred metres below the summit, just below the tree-line, where most visitors stay overnight before a morning assault on the heights of Olympus.

Outside the taverna, signs warn that a nearby spring is the last source of free water on the mountain: the parched summer has left the refuge high and dry and drinking and washing are possible only with bottled mineral water, which is supplied by packhorse and helicopter.

The trek up to the refuge is busier than the canyon. Many Germans, Serbs, Montenegrins and Russians pass by on their way down. I reach the building as the sun fades. It is a well-organised, high-altitude youth hostel with a couple of dozen guests, though most of them tonight are less-than-youthful Germans.

It’s the end of the summer and recently there has been some rain, and even a first brief snowfall. From today we are allowed a dribble of mains water to wash off the day’s sweat. More importantly, the toilets have reopened after a long closure, during which guests had to trudge to a distant designated spot in the surrounding forest.

I enter the common bathroom to find two topless German women washing their armpits with the meagre drips of the tap. An involuntary British bashfulness mumbles “sorry” and pushes me one step backwards. But their very German lack of prudishness beckons me in, and I perform my ablutions in the basin between them.

Later, after a meal of honest Greek stodge, and in front of the refuge’s open fire, I plot a summit strategy with a young American couple doing a rapid tour of the country. Mike and Diane are creative types from Boston, who make music by night and do desk-jobs by day to fund their passion.

The refuge staff have a ceramic model of the mountain top to help hikers visualise their routes. My plan is to reach the summit by a well-worn path but to descend via the little used ‘louki couloir,’ a very steep chute that has the benefit of allowing climbers to descend the mountain along a different route.

“We don’t recommend it, but if there’s no ice up there, and you don’t mind heights, and you don’t have a heavy rucksack, it’s possible,” says the wise refuge manageress of the short but notorious path. “Don’t go with anyone else because you’ll knock loose rock onto each other.”

Around eight in the morning the refuge’s inhabitants file out of the building, pass through the tree-line and emerge into a calm, cloudless day. A long hot trek across featureless shale leads to the teetering edge of the summit ridge, where, on the other side, the awesome Kazania chasm plunges thousands of feet into the neighbouring valley.

Olympus has three main summits. The highest is Mitikas, the name a reflection of its mythical importance. The last few dozen metres to its top are tricky and require a nerve for heights and some hands-and-feet scrambling. Many bypass it for nearby Skolio, only a few metres lower but much easier to negotiate.

Mike and Diane choose the less risky Skolio. But I am set on Mitikas and so press on, along a short descending stretch of the ridge known as Kakoskala – the evil stairway. In my eagerness, though, I slip on the smooth rock and tumble clumsily downhill for a couple of pulse-quickening seconds, before managing to halt my fall.

There’s bruising and grazing to my hands, feet and camera, but all are still functioning. I pause to let the adrenalin subside, and reflect ruefully that the name of this section really should have been a warning.

Ten minutes later I’m scrambling gingerly up to the summit. There’s no sign of Greek deities, but there is a tin Greek flag, a squat trig point and some ragged bunting strung between them. And there is an awe-inspiring 360-degree view, undimmed by the midday haze, over the Aegean and the pine-covered foothills of Olympus.

There’s also a metal tin containing a visitors’ guest-book, regularly replaced by the refuge. The book’s first entry, from three weeks earlier, is scraped in charcoal and addresses a practical difficulty with ingenuity: “No pen! Burned some wood!!!”

By the time of my visit a biro has been installed. Most of the guestbook’s entries are in Greek, followed roughly equally by German and English. The inscriptions contain expressions of euphoria, exhaustion, relief, revelation.

And humour. One recent visitor had left the summit disappointed after hoping for an audience with Zeus and his kin. “Unfortunately the gods weren’t home, they had gone to Poseidon’s underwater palace for lunch. Told me to ring ahead next time.”

I have reached the summit relatively late and lounge undisturbed for half an hour in the sun. But I’m also procrastinating over the descent. Can I handle the steep and unrecommended 'Louki Coulouir' path down, or does the fall show I’ve reached the limits of my mountaineering ability?

A pack of Greek climbers arrives and their leader assures me the path is less difficult than its reputation. Emboldened, I start the descent, climbing more slowly and surely than I’ve ever done, past memorial plaques to other climbers for whom Olympus was the last summit they reached. Thirty minutes later I join a level path skirting the east face of summit massif, with renewed conviction in my legs.

I lunch at a second, much less frequented mountain refuge, where two middle-aged Greek men are the only visitors. The rest of the walk down yields more outstanding views of Olympus’s beautiful peaks and valleys. The path leads back down below the tree-line and eventually comes to a clearing above the Enipeas gorge. Far below, I can make out the monastery by the river.

Seven hours after leaving the summit I emerge at a spot on the day-tripper road around the canyon. It’s nearly eight and the light is almost gone, but a group of cheerful young Poles is still heading upwards towards the taverna, hoping to find a bed.

I’m heading downhill, but am still a good way from my own bed in Litochoro, the base-camp village. I have a choice: I can walk the remaining 13 kilometres along the road in the dark, or I can hitchhike. My pride tells me to tighten my laces and get into a stride. But I feel a throb in my bruised foot, a low grumble in my stomach, and I stick my thumb out.