Lake Tsivlou & River Krathes ~ Τσιβλού & Κράθις

A photo series in four parts – Part 4/4

Tracing our final steps, in this last part of the series on Lake Tsivlou, one of the youngest natural lakes in Europe, at an altitude of 2,625 feet on the mountain range of Chelmos in Achaea: I gave you a run-down of the events that gave birth to Tsivlou (Part 1), a glimpse of how the lake is currently doing (Part 2), and some fun trivia on the mountain sources and the river that started it all (Part 3).

The Mountain Range of Chelmos (alternative spelling Helmos)

When this post was first published, in 2013, the page results you’d get if you typed “Helmos” in a search engine, wouldn’t be relevant to the actual location at all… no siree, no TripAdvisor listings there! A fantasy RP game for PS3 called “Record of Agarest War”, was quite popular back then. In RAOW heros entered into a contract to save their life, and had to adventure across five continents to fulfill it. One of the battle fields was rather tricky and players seemed to get stuck there a lot. The name of that battle field was, you guessed it, Helmos Mountain. So yes, the top pages popping up at the time all directed to an infinite number of forums, guides, and walk-throughs!

The slopes of Chelmos that overlook the town of Akrata (which belongs to the municipality of Aegealéa which, in turn, belongs to the region of Achaea). The road goes around the dusky gorge you can see here.

Η επαρχιακή οδός Ακράτας-Ζαρούχλας (λέγεται και Φενεού-Ακράτας) είναι παράλληλη του φαραγγιού που σχηματίζουν οι πλαγιές του Χελμού ενώ στο βάθος φαίνεται η θάλασσα και απέναντι, στον κόλπο της Ιτέας, το κομμάτι στεριάς που διακρίνεται είναι η ευρύτερη περιοχή του Γαλαξιδίου.

The all blue horizon is actually part sky, part sea (the Gulf of Corinth stretches below) and the streak of land you can barely see is Galaxidi (southern part of Phocis/Fokida).

*images by Athina D. Pantazatou for Kicking Back the Pebbles