Pilgrimage: The Story of the Hellenic Mountain Race (Film)

With additional photos by Lloyd Wright

I paced anxiously, waiting for the rider to arrive. I stood atop a mile-high gravel pass, looking down on what felt like the whole of the mountainous Grecian backcountry. As the sun set, I grew nervous that I would miss the shot we had driven hours up a rugged road to get. A small crew and I had crisscrossed Greece’s towering Pindus Mountains for seven sleepless nights and days, and we needed just a few more impactful shots to pull the film together. Just as I thought we would lose the last rays of light, a French rider named Matthieu Segard pedaled around the corner, silhouetted by the gleaming peaks behind him.

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He stopped to put on a jacket for the long descent ahead and looked out over the folds of mountains, squinting as though he was trying to see the Mediterranean in the distance. I let the camera roll. With under 80 kilometers remaining in the 883-kilometer Hellenic Mountain Race, I watched as emotion overcame him. Tears streamed down his face and as he spoke.
 
“Now that it’s coming to an end, I feel it is too short,” he said.
 
Matthieu finished putting on his jacket and made his way down the seemingly unending gravel switchbacks while we loaded up the car to follow. His sentiment resonated. I’d only slept for one hour in the lobby of a hotel the night before, but I didn’t feel like stopping now. Filming a bikepacking race puts the media crew in a similar situation as the riders. If the lead racers aren’t sleeping much, you don’t sleep either. Riders stock up on cookies and Haribo in grocery stores and gas stations, and we munch on bags of chips while driving hours through the night. Despite this, I wasn’t ready for my journey to end in the coastal town of Nafpaktos.

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Eight days earlier, I had arrived in Meteora, Greece, with the race organizer Nelson Trees to make a film about the second edition of the Hellenic Mountain Race. As a freelance documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, I shoot everything from geology series to music videos, but I love bikepacking. I produced films about Nelson’s other two races, the Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan and the Atlas Mountain Race in Morocco, and this film was a chance to complete the trilogy. I had seen pictures of the first edition. I knew the race route was a far cry from the bustling streets of Athens or the beautiful island villages that Greece is known for, but I was still caught off guard by the mountains of Meteora.

 
Massive sandstone towers erupt from the ground and stand sentinel over the start of the race in the rural town of Kalabaka. If the rocks weren’t otherworldly enough, monks have built a series of monasteries directly into the stone monoliths. The effect is palpable. It is hard not to feel a certain reverence for the effort that went into building the structures. It was against this backdrop that I began to think of the race as a sort of pilgrimage—a journey to a holy site that leads to personal transformation.

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The Hellenic Mountain Race is an 883-kilometer bikepacking race that climbs a whopping 30,000 meters along its route. The event is unsupported, meaning all riders must carry their supplies with them on their bikes and can only resupply at spots that are commercially available to everyone participating. If something goes wrong, like a mechanical issue or an injury, riders can leave the route to get it fixed but must return to the course at the same point. The course follows a mix of gravel roads, singletrack, and alpine hike-a-bike through some of Greece’s most remote high-altitude sections.
 
Riders who want to place well must pedal almost nonstop and typically sleep only a few hours every night, sometimes forgoing sleep entirely if strategy calls for it. The fastest racers complete the route in about four days, and the rest of the field has eight days to make it in time for the finisher’s party. The race is a massive endeavor for riders, and it’s also a serious challenge for the race crew and media team.

 
Three control cars follow the race to ensure everything is going smoothly and to document the competition as it unfolds. A videographer and a podcaster teamed up in Control Car Three to capture the daily stories of the field, another photographer joined Control Car Two to survey the middle of the pack, and another photographer and I documented everything that went on toward the front of the race in Control Car One.

 
The start of any race is an anxious time. Riders are nervous about what they’re about to do to their bodies and minds, and the organization is worrying over the logistics of sending 100 or so cyclists into one of the most remote areas of Greece. Like the other races I’ve filmed, I found myself overshooting from the start. A shaggy dog in the town square. Film it. A bunch of sleepy cats lounging in the sun. Film them, too. A well-placed yellow scooter against a pastel pink wall. Get it.

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While I knew most of it wouldn’t make the final cut, it eased the nerves to get some footage in the can. Uncertainty is a large part of documenting Nelson’s races. The Silk Road Mountain Race, Atlas Mountain Race, and Hellenic Mountain Race don’t allow outside media or a focus on one specific rider. A rider may have a uniquely inspiring story—pre-race favorite Marin de Saint-Exupéry rode to the start of the race from his home in Lausanne, Switzerland, having already ridden to Morocco to compete in the Atlas Mountain Race earlier in the year—but if that rider fades early on or even drops out, chances are there won’t be enough footage to build a movie around them. The upside to this is that it forces filmmakers and photographers to constantly adapt and capture the race as it unfolds. You have to find the story along the way. It always takes a few days of filming to feel confident that there will be something good to show at the end.

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This time, it only took about 13 hours to see the film take shape. After a dry start, rain started to pour, and we waited in a small town on the route for riders to arrive. The early leaders came in drenched but still in good spirits. We followed along as Marin made his way to a small shelter to take a short break from the deluge. He pulled out a jar of Ovomaltine, a Swiss version of Nutella, and proceeded to eat the entire jar in just a few minutes.
 
“That’s 2,000 calories in 10 minutes,” he exclaimed with a mouth full of chocolate and a wild look in his eyes.
 
These are the moments that I love. While it’s the drone shots of sweeping vistas and emotional interviews with riders that tie a film like this together, the wacky moments feel the most important to me. How does a Swiss cyclist end up drenched to the bone in a small shack in the middle of the Greek mountains, eating a whole thing of chocolate spread in just a few short moments? It’s a scene borne from exhaustion, dopamine, and determination that I’ve only seen when people are pushing themselves to the limits yet somehow still having a good time doing it. It’s a combination that feels unique to bikepacking racing—and to documenting it.

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Or take Emma Missale, a bike messenger and first-time ultra racer making her way into a tiny remote mountain village only to be warmly greeted at the one restaurant in town as Ms. Missale by the owners. A rider had turned them on to the race’s GPS tracking, and the rural restauranteurs had taken it upon themselves to anticipate each arriving racer with a personalized greeting and the offer of a huge bowl of pasta and home-baked goods.

 
“Greece is not what I expected,” was a common refrain as we stopped to chat with riders along the route. It became clear to me early on that a goal of the film would be to show aspiring bicycle tourists that there is another side to Greece. A quick Google search of the country reveals exclusively whitewashed villages on islands and ancient ruins, not even a hint of the huge mountains that make up much of the country.

 
Through deep gorges hewn by ancient rivers and over 2,000-meter alpine passes, Nelson’s route was a beauty to behold and a pleasure to film. As a small media crew, Nelson, photographer Lloyd Wright, our driver Efthimi, and I found a frantic rhythm. Follow the race into the night. Find a place to sleep for about two hours. Get to a scenic spot for sunrise. Eat souvlaki and Greek salad. Get back out and film riders until sunset. Do it again. The accumulation of sleep debt eventually wore us out, but every time we were treated to a sunrise in the mountains with a bike rider weaving their way through the landscape, it all felt worth it.

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Whether you’re racing or touring, I know no better way to immerse yourself in a culture and a landscape than traveling by bike. The mountains of Greece provided a stunning backdrop for the Hellenic Mountain Race, and after eight grueling days filming riders and endless hours of editing, I hope this film gets folks fired up for a real adventure in a beautiful place populated by even better people. Now it’s time to sleep.

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