Anavasi with Penelope Matsouka

In this episode Jason König interviews Penelope Matsouka, co-founder of Anavasi, about map-making in the mountains of Greece. 

We start by talking about Penelope’s experience of the mountains as a student, and about the first steps in setting up Anavasi, which has had a transformative impact on the accessibility of the mountains of Greece over the last few decades.

She discusses the past and future challenges for cartography, including the inaccessible and incomplete military maps which were the only option available before Anavasi, the early days of working with GPS and GIS, the hard work of walking along mountain paths with children in tow, and the importance of maintaining map-reading literacy in the future, in an age where we are more and more dependent on ‘following a dot on a screen’.

Penelope talks about her favourite mountains in Greece, especially Mount Olympus, and about the extraordinary experience of photographing Olympus from the air, after many years of walking backwards and forwards over the paths.

We discuss Penelope’s experience of climbing outside Greece, in the Alps and the Himalayas, and also her love of the small islands of Greece.

Finally Penelope offers some thoughts on the challenges and possible solutions for mountain regions in Greece faced with depopulation: ‘When there are no people living in the mountains, no one is present to defend them. And then those who wish to exploit them, they appear, and they are indifferent to their beauty and to the sustainability of the resources … Hikers and mountaineers are the custodians of the mountains. So the priority for the future is to create the conditions that will allow more and more people to get to know the mountains’.

This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin.

To learn more about the Mountains of Greece project you can visit our website https://mountainsofgreece.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/, or follow us on Bluesky @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social. 

For the broader Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk, or follow us on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social.

Transcript

Speaker 0:02

Welcome to the Mountains of Greece podcast series, which is part of the broader Mountain Stories Mountain Futures Podcast Project. These interviews follow up on our recent Mountains of Greece conference held at the British School at Athens in October 2025. The goal of the project is to explore a wide range of stories from people working on different aspects of mountain heritage in Greece that involves thinking about the past, but also thinking about the future. How can we find new ways of engaging with history, heritage, and conservation in the mountain landscapes of Greece? How can we ensure a sustainable approach to environmental and cultural preservation? I'm Jason Koenig from the University of St. Andrews. It's a great pleasure to welcome Penelope Matsuka, Penelope's co-founder of the mapping company Anavasi, founded in 1997. I think it's really no exaggeration to say that Anavasi has done more than anything else to make the mountains of Greece more widely accessible over the last three decades. And we're going to hear more about that today. So welcome, Penelope. It's great to have the chance to talk to you and to hear your story today.

Speaker 1 1:06

Thank you for inviting me. I'm very thrilled to share stories, knowledge, and maybe more, most of all, to share my awareness about the future, as you mentioned.

Speaker 1:20

Brilliant. Can I start by asking you just to outline how you came to be interested in mountains, both personally and also in your career? Were mountains important to you in your childhood when you were growing up and early in your life? How did you come to have this interest?

Speaker 1 1:36

So I shall state mathematical theory, the chaos theory, you know, if people are aware of what more or less is involved in the theory. In a few words, it's how tiny changes in initial conditions can lead to very large and unpredictable effects. And there's another point about this theory, the bifurcations, that are the points where a small change causes a sudden shift to a very different behavior. Okay, enough of mathematics, but I like this theory because I find it explains many things in our lives. So I was born in a city dwelling and sea-oriented family, as most Greek families that live in cities or not in the mountains, and I had little contact with the mountain environment. However, I loved sports. Then there was this bifurcation point where I went on a school excursion to the Swiss Alps, and then I first saw the Mont Blanc, and I was fascinated. I was just 10 years old by the mountains, majesty, immensity. I can't describe my feelings at the moment, but I remember I promised myself to climb there one day. Mountains came into my professional life later, of course, because at first I engaged with them as a mountaineer.

Speaker 3:08

Great. That's really interesting that it was the Alps, in fact, that gave you that initial inspiration. Yeah, I love that image of the bifurcation, the fork in the road, which is obviously a very appropriately mountainous image there. So if we take the story a bit further, you studied ecology in Toulouse, and then you worked, I think, for the World Wildlife Fund for a little while. Could you tell us a little bit about that experience and also about how that prepared the ground for the work you've done later on in your career in cartography?

Speaker 1 3:35

Yes. I started studying medical studies, dentistry, and uh I turned to ecology because of my involvement with the mountains. The reason is that as a mountaineer, and most mountaineers are also nature lovers, not all of them, but it's very common. I felt I had to do something for the mountain environment. As early as the 80s, I could see the threats reaching the mountains. So then, after the studies in ecology, my first job was with the World Wildlife Fund, and I learned a lot of my involvement with them. However, it is an organization, an environmental organization with policies and restrictions. And with the free spirit I had shaped in the mountains, I couldn't easily adapt. So I resigned. And also, where in my job with WWF in Dadia Forest in Everest, I put in this mountaineering site because I created two hiking trails to visit the Bird Observatory that until then was only accessible by car. And I had to present this on a simple map again.

Speaker 5:15

I haven't heard that story before. It's interesting to hear how that's your mapping is rooted in your World Wildlife Fund experience, but also that that's something you quickly felt you needed to move beyond as well, the kind of freedom that you needed as a mountaineer and as a cartographer too. So how how did Anavassi come about? But you started to answer that question, I guess, but at least you've told us a little bit there about what the inspiration was or what the first steps were. What steps did you need to take then when you decided to set up Anavasi as a company and to go to another level with the cartography work you were doing?

Speaker 1 5:49

Yes, I would say just a few words about the magazine, which is uh the root of the continuation. So we were three students and independent mountaineers, and we wanted to share information that barely exists at that time with those who might be interested. We published things like beautiful hiking trails, climbing routes, and also technical but also literary texts. And soon nature conservation issues were also included in our magazine. A dozen years after the magazine ceased, because it was related to that time of our life where you know student years are a period when you have plenty of time, first of all, of enthusiasm and ideas. So a dozen years after the magazine ceased, I decided to start a publishing venture with hiking maps and guidebooks, which were totally missing from the Greek market. At that time, the only source for maps was the Army's Geographical Service maps, where you could buy them with a lot of paperwork. And besides that, a large part of the country was not available. Imagine something like 100 kilometers from the borders, and Greece is a country surrounded by borders. So neither Crete nor the eastern Aegean Islands, northern the whole of northern Greece was available. The maps that were available were not intended for hikers. So there was some information of footpaths, especially of older origin, from the time they were doing cartographic work by walking, because meanwhile there were also evolutions in cartography. And so the information was scarce and above all unconfirmed. So the first steps were difficult, and not because we were learning a new job, a new expertise, but also because we were living through a transition from hand-drawn maps to digital cartography. And this was worldwide, not only in Greece. And it's funny that we were somehow leaders. We were among the first to implement GIS and the use of GPS because big organizations in other countries, because we were fresh, new, and with little background material, so it was easy for us to convert, as big institutions had slower rhythms. We had to learn new techniques and software along the way, but these changes were for us exciting and overwhelming. What was emerging was making us enthusiast. And so we did work very hard, but we were at the same time thrilled about what we were doing.

Speaker 8:44

Yeah, that's exciting to hear just about what a big gap there was to fill. I mean, you bring that out very vividly. It was just really hard to know where you were to find your way in the mountains 30 or 40 years ago, wasn't it? But also just to see how rapidly everything was changing at that exciting time. What were the hardest challenges you faced initially in the first few years?

Speaker 1 9:03

Well, this was also a problem of Greece. There was very little knowledge. Maps were secret, and they wouldn't even mention the projection on the maps. There were no Cartesian coordinates. This was considered classified information. So we had to learn about so many things at the same time. GIS was very complicated. It worked at that time on programming language. It wasn't interactive with the graphic environment you have today. So everything was a great struggle at many levels. And also, though we loved to hike most of the time, we had to drive roads as well. And this was very challenging because they were missing from the maps, and you need them to get to the path. So we usually drove at night to spend the daylight for hiking. These years were full of emotion and creativity, so there's nothing to regret this chapter.

Speaker 10:06

Fantastic. So I mean I think most people probably use maps without really understanding how maps are made and what it takes to make a map, or what it particularly what it would have taken to make a map 20 or 30 years ago. One of the things that I think will seem astonishing to a lot of our listeners, certainly seemed astonishing to me when you first explained it to me, is that you actually walked yourself nearly all of the paths on your maps. Is that right? And I mean, can you tell us a little bit about how you did that? It must have taken a huge amount of time, basically, to do it. Big time investment.

Speaker 1 10:37

I think that at the beginning we were just two of us working on the maps, and this was exactly an enormous amount of work. Still walking and exploring was something we loved deeply. We put our heart, our soul, and our total investment in there. When my children were young before starting the cartography company, I always took them with me into the mountains because it felt natural to me to share my greatest passion with them, despite the difficulties I was carrying them on my body since the birth, actually. We never, as a family, we'd never had ordinary vacations. When they were out of school, we would roam in the mountains all the time, moving from place to place. And but this is what, you know, for other people, this is a hobby. For us, it was hobby and work at the same time. Of course, there is a different approach when you work. You must be more focused and have discipline. But this helped also our children, it helped to educate them. I think it is really important for children to, whatever your job is, to come in contact with what their parents are doing all day long. Maybe if it's occasional, it's very important that money do not come from the ATM, as my son thought when he was really young. Let's go to the machine that gives money. It's good for them to know that you have to struggle to make a living.

Speaker 12:12

Yeah, I agree. I've dragged my children up many Greek mountains as well. They're nothing like as many as you. So, no, that's fantastic to hear. So it's a hobby work, but also, I suppose, a way of life. It's with all the time that you spent there on the trails. So the next question I want to ask, it was one I've asked you before, actually, but it's I'd love to know what are your favorite mountains in Greece. I think presumably Mount Olympus is one of them. But what is so special about Mount Olympus, and also what other mountains would you add to that list?

Speaker 1 12:42

Many mountains have something unique. Personally, I'm attracted to those with rocky terrain and sheer cliffs. I'm actually attracted by dramatic landscape. So Mount Olympus certainly is very high among my favorites. But Mount Tymphy in northern Greece, northwestern Greece, Epirus is magnificent as well. As also in the Peloponnese, Mount Aegetos, a very majestic mountain. And then Mount Biona and Mount Vardhusia in central Greece, they are all so different, and each one has something very, very special. And many, many other mountains in central Pindus and Agrafa, I would be attracted, so I don't neglect them, of course. But you know the old rounded forested massif. This is not my favorite, I can say. Greece has alpine orography chains, which are quite young in geological times, and it's a very disturbed geological area, so you can see very impressive landforms and uh very impressive mountains, though not huge, but spectacular.

Speaker 14:02

Great, yes, and that's true, of course, of Olympus in particular.

Speaker 1 14:06

Yeah, Olympus is by the sea, and this makes it very impressive because you start from sea level to 3,000 meters, and uh you you have the a complete view of the mountain. It's a mountain that is not hidden, it reveals its beauty to those that just pass by. It has to do with probably with the impact that the mountain had, but it's visible to to anybody, and you can see that it is impressive from sea level. It's something very unique.

Speaker 14:43

Yeah, absolutely. It's as a as a whole, it's just incredibly visible, just standing up from the plains around it. On the subject of visibility, I wanted to ask you a little bit also about your experience of photographing Olympus from the air, particularly for your amazing book. The title is Olympus 100 Years, which is full of absolutely stunning, breathtaking photos of the mountain from many different angles. That must have been an extraordinary experience for you after spending so much time on foot on the trails around Olympus.

Speaker 1 15:14

I've made several books with aerial photographs, but for me also Mount Olympus is my favorite. And once at an exhibition of aerial photographs, I wrote after walking on the land for decades, the sky sent me a gift, a pilot with a helicopter to fly over the landscapes I loved. So to watch, to experience dozen of hours of hiking unfold in just a few minutes and to recognize the places below is overwhelming. Nothing to do if you fly over a place you don't know. It's like you retrace your steps but in quick motion. And of course the images you see from above are extraordinary. And I would like to anticipate the inevitable question about drones, because everybody asks. First of all, when I began aerial photography, they didn't yet exist. But more importantly, there is no comparison because I've taken pictures with drones, of course, between experience and photographing something first hand and merely viewing it on a small screen. There is no emotion in a picture taken by a drone. The experience of Mount Olympus was unique. I saw images that will remain in my memory forever, from higher up than the peaks. You can see a spiral formed by the mountain's relief. Because we stayed very late in winter, the last rays of the sun illuminated the saddle between the two highest peaks, Miticas and Stefani. It was some very unique scenes. I must state also that I had a very experienced and exceptional pilot who knew how to fly within the mountains, which is a very difficult skill. And Mount Olympus is not easy to fly. It has very many, many tricky places. So it was really a gift for life.

Speaker 17:19

Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talking about drones and the kind of limitations of drone drone photography.

Speaker 1 17:25

It's I mean, obviously, we're much more used to seeing drones these days, but still when you are up there, you feel and then you react. First, you have the emotion that you see all around, not only where the camera spots, but you see the whole landscape, and then you choose one spot that takes your attention. I mean, it's not random, it's a photograph that you make the way you make the photos on land. I mean, you are there and you react to the whole for something that is really attractive or uh interesting to you at that moment. And you have the whole experience, you are there with the camera. This is very, very different. You leave it.

Speaker 18:11

Yeah, that makes sense. The photos really are stunning, they're very special photos in the book. I spend a lot of time staring at it for minutes on end, and it it makes more sense just hearing you talk about that and thinking about the kind of the years, even the decades of knowledge of that landscape that you were bringing to those photographs in a way that you can't reproduce that actually just through sticking your drone up in the air without knowing anything about what you're photographing.

Speaker 1 18:34

The book itself is also a story, because it was published on the anniversary of the first ascent on Mount Olympus in 1913 by the two Swiss men and their Greek guide, the hunter guide from Litochoro, then it was a bifurcation point for the mountain, because then the history of Mount Olympus becomes a history of mountaineering. It was very interesting how it coincides with the Greek mountaineering history, because many things happened on Mount Olympus that were significant for the evolution of Greek mountaineering.

Speaker 19:17

Correct, yeah. So actually a place with a really a very special mountaineering history as well, which I think is maybe still not as widely known as it should be. And the history of mountaineering worldwide is still dominated by the Alps, it's still dominated by the Himalayas, but Olympus has a very special part in that story, obviously, as a central place in Greek mountaineering history, too. So we've talked a little bit about the changes to the cartography industry that you experienced, particularly early on in your experience of setting up the Annavasi Company, and about those old military base maps that were the only option available right at the beginning. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what you feel has changed over the years, and also what does the future look like for cartography as a profession?

Speaker 1 20:02

Indeed, the changes in cartography have been very impressive. It's a very important moment in the history of cartography, the end of the 20th century, from the time of Ptolemy, whom we can say inaugurated scientific cartography with coordinates. The next major evolution was the introduction of the trigonometric networks by the French, who brought accuracy to measurements, because all the time in between the maps were not very accurate. And the next leap came with the aerial photography. But the changes at the turn of the twentieth century, namely the satellite-based geolocation networks, what we call GPS, the digital shared mapping platforms, Google Maps, Google Earth, and GIS, the geographic information systems software which is used for not only make maps but for processing geographic information. They did not only transformed the cartographic techniques, but they did something more revolutionary. They made maps a common possession of the society. It was a kind of democratization of cartography, which until then maps had been an instrument of power. It's not coincidence that in many countries, most of the countries, cartography was in the hands of the military. We were very fortunate to live through and closely observe all these changes and to adapt to them. Of course, as the tools improve, the demands for detail and accuracy also increase. And this is a continuous struggle, I can tell you. Maps and people do not forgive mistakes. The maps I usually say in a text. You can hide an ignorance or a thing that is not very clear in the appropriate words. The maps are revealing. You either you know or you know. There's no intermediate. And road cannot be uh approximately there. It is there or it is not.

Speaker 22:20

Yeah, and people's lives are depending on them.

Speaker 1 22:23

Yeah, sure. It's uh we are very much connected now to the maps. It's uh it's incredible how they have entered our everyday life to make us more efficient, but at the same time a little bit dumb about the space.

Speaker 22:38

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 22:39

People don't recognize, don't know how to read their surroundings. This is a problem that we must really face in the near future.

Speaker 22:50

Agreed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what are the future challenges for you and for other map makers, would you say, for the next 10-20 years?

Speaker 1 22:58

Technology uh evolves and you have more and more powerful and efficient tools in your hands, but we lose this competence of reading the environment and understanding where we are. So we have to do society, not and we have our share as cartographers to keep educating people about map reading, because otherwise you just follow a dot on your screen and you don't know where you're going, and you are totally dependent on uh what happens with your device. So we have to teach people how to read the space, especially in the mountains, this is much more crucial, of course. But even in the cities, people should step a little bit back and use the the paper map to okay, it's it's a tool, you must use it when you need it, it's helpful, but you must not rely absolutely on this. So, as for other technologies and things in life, you must not turn your back to tradition and traditional knowledge because it is very valuable, it has been gathered along the centuries, and it's a very big loss to lose it.

Speaker 24:18

Fantastic. Thanks. Just a few other questions before we finish. I wonder if you could tell us also a little bit about some of the climbing you've done outside Greece. I think you've done some climbing in Asia and perhaps beyond as well. What was that experience like? How did that experience give you a new perspective on mountains nearer to home within Greece?

Speaker 1 24:37

You know the expression you have to leave home to truly know it.

Speaker 24:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1 24:44

Or appreciate it, maybe. Indeed, I have climbed both in the Alps in my early years when I was very young, and in the Himalayas, not many times, just two or three times. It is, of course, a unique and powerful experience for every mountaineer. Well, the Alps are like a miniature version of the Himalayas. They have very difficult peaks, they have glaciers, they have vast white expanses. Yet every once in a while you can see an inhabited valley appearing somewhere around. The Himalayas are completely out of this world, an isolated place. Your engagement there is absolute. There is no easy escape. And in addition to this, human physiology does not fully support us at such altitudes. So you need time for adaptation, what is called acclimatization. And even this only works up to a certain altitude, around 7500. Above that, most people, except some very special uh human beings, need supplementary oxygen to breathe. So, yes, it's interesting to have been to those places, but our mountains are like the country as a whole on a human scale. You are always only hours away from civilization. And civilization has penetrated deep into the mountains. Everywhere it has left visible traces. It can be peak peak sanctuaries, shepherds' huts, stone enclosures, watering troughs, and much more. So in the Greek mountains I feel as if I am at home. I don't think you can feel familiar. It's an exciting experience, but you don't want to go back many times. Or you have a very, very special attraction, not for me. When you have to breathe four or five times to make a step, this is like torture in a way. Okay. The scenery is really beyond imagination.

Speaker 27:21

Great, thank you. It's very inspiring to hear that. So the Greek mountains are, of course, they're wild places, but they're also cultural places, human places, as you make clear there. I know you you're also fascinated by the islands of Greece and maybe small islands in particular. I wonder if you could just say a little bit about that as well.

Speaker 1 27:39

Yeah, sure. First of all, the islands are mountains too. They are the mountains of Aegis, the land that used to connect mainland Greece to Turkey once, that was submerged. So they are just mountains drowned into the sea. And what we see are their peaks. What I really like about islands is the limited space. It's a relief for the cartographer. You always know where the map will end, and you adjust the scale of the map to the size of the island. No puzzle. But especially I'm fond of small islands because they also have another advantage. You can explore them entirely on foot. You don't need a car. This way you get into the spirit of the place, and also their landscapes are entirely handmade because in such a limited space they had to take advantage of even the tiniest available cultivable land. It's amazing, for instance, on an island like Sikinos, where you can see very, very tiny terraces really carved into the cliffs. So great was their need within a limited space to create cultivable land. Also, the connection with the landscape on small islands is very strong, but equally strong is the sadness when you see these landscapes being disfigured by constructions that are out of scale and out of the essence of the place. It is a scourge advancing at great speed. And we are actually racing against time to preserve something of the beauty of measure, tometro, and harmony of these unique places. And this is the bad side of what's happening right now. Because these are really games that we should absolutely protect, and we are just misbehaving on our land.

Speaker 29:52

So that brings me nicely on to the last question I wanted to ask, which is about future challenges that are facing mountain landscapes and mountain communities, and also island landscapes, island communities in Greece and beyond. What do you feel are the big challenges? How can cartography help? What are the priorities for the future?

Speaker 1 30:13

So I would say the greatest issue at the moment is the abandonment of the mountain regions, because from this abandonment all the other problems arise. When there are no people living in the mountains, no one is present to defend them. And then those who wish to exploit them, they appear, and they are indifferent to their beauty and to the sustainability of the resources. In Greece, especially there is an acute problem with the uncontrolled installation of wind turbines on untouched mountain peaks under the pretext of green energy. It is a massive fraud because irreplaceable landscapes and extremely important habitats, the few that remain undisturbed, are being destroyed in the name of quick profit, and the full extent of the damage has not yet been assessed, because it is not just damage to landscape. It affects biodiversity, hydrological cycles, climate, erosion, and much more. Hikers and mountaineers, who by definition are also nature lovers, are today to a large extent the guardians of mountain ecosystems. They are the ones resisting to the destruction of the mountains, and we with our maps, we help and encourage people to go into the mountains, to walk, to discover their beauty, and to become aware and want to protect them. Hikers and mountaineers are the custodians of the mountains. So the priority for the future is to create the conditions that will allow more and more people to get to know the mountains. This will create either directly or indirectly what is needed for their re-inhabitation. Because if there is people going there, there will be need for places to stay, for things to eat, and the economy will be able to run again. I think that any other alternative of financing people to go there or is not, or you have those extreme ecologists that are ready to move to the mountains with all the existing lacks of infrastructure, of facilities and anything, but this is not a big-scale project. I believe that hikers, mountaineers, are those who will revive the mountains if they become a critical mass. So that is what I seek for the future and what we are working on. Because I believe that if you don't know the beauty, you're not interested in protecting it. If you haven't seen it, it's like something happening very far away from you, and you're not interested. When you get involved with this, then you are aware. I said uh what's really in my heart and what I believe and what I'm struggling for and what I'm working for, and I will do this until my last breath. I'm getting more and more involved, even in stuff I would uh be attracted years before, because we have to act, we have to be active citizens, because otherwise we will uh we will see what we love uh perish. And uh hopefully there are movements of citizens that are arising all around. Of course, this is the way it happens when you have the problem that gets uh acute, then people mobilize. It would be better to prevent, but okay, at least if we can save even parts of it, we will have done something for our children for the future.

Speaker 34:05

Great, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 34:07

Thank you, Jason, for giving me the opportunity to say all these things.

Speaker 34:12

Thanks, Penelope. That's a very powerful way to finish. Thanks for a great conversation today. Thanks to Zophia Getin for editing. We've got more episodes coming up exploring mountain heritage in Greece from a whole range of other perspectives. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do share our podcast with others and have a look at our other episodes. You can follow us on social media or get in touch directly via the Mountains of Greece project website. You might like also to have a look at the separate website for the broader mountain stories, mountain features project that this series is a part of. You can follow the links to both of those in the episode notes. Thank you for listening.