The Coastal Hill Range, East Crete is a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...

Lasithi Lasithi () is the easternmost regional unit on the island of Crete, to the east of Heraklion. Its capital is Agios Nikolaos, the other major towns being Ierapetra and Sitia. The mountains include the Dikti in the west and the Thrypti in the ...

in eastern

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. It trends to the northeast from Xerokampos in the southwest in the direction of

Cape Sidero Cape Sideros or Cape Sidero () is a cape at the eastern end of the island of Crete, Greece. Anciently it was known as Samonium or Samonion (), Sammonium or Sammonion (), Salmonium or Salmonion (Σαλμώνιον) and Salmone (Σαλμώνη). T ...

. The range, however is drowned on the eastern slopes by the

Kasos Kasos (; , ), also Casos, is a Greek island municipality in the Dodecanese. It is the southernmost island in the Aegean Sea, and is part of the regional unit Karpathos-Kasos. The capital of the island is Fri. , its population was 1,223. ...

Strait, a deepwater channel between the island of Kasos and the island of Crete. Its peaks thus become headlands, islands, or near-surface elevations, while the

col A col is the lowest point on a mountain ridge between two peaks; a mountain pass or saddle. COL, CoL or col may also refer to: Computers * Caldera OpenLinux, a defunct Linux distribution * , an HTML element specifying a column * A collision sig ...

s between them are typically beaches.

Geography

The Coastal Hill Range is one of three SW-NE trending ranges of east Crete, the other two being called the Siteia Mountains. It consists of the Zakros Mountains on the east and, south to north in a row, the

Thrypti Thrypti () is a mountain range in Lasithi in eastern Crete, Greece. It trends to the northeast from Ierapetra in the southwest in the direction of Sitia. However, it only goes half-way in that direction. The rest of the distance is completed by t ...

Ornon Ornon () is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. Population See also *Communes of the Isère department The following is a list of the 512 communes in the French department of Isère. The communes cooperate in t ...

, and

Western Siteia Foothills The Western Siteia Foothills are a range of foothills in Lasithi in eastern Crete, Greece. They are transitional in altitude between the Ornon Mountains, which trends from west to east starting at Kavousi in Ierapetra and ending at Praesos in ...

on the west, the two rows being separated by the Rema Pentelis ("Pentelis river"), a stream with its valley that flows S-N across most of Crete at that point, entering the Bay of Sitia just east of Sitia. Between the Siteia mountains and the Coastal Hill Range is the Zakros Basin, providing access to all the east Crete beaches and the two main promontories, Cape Sidero and Cape Plaka. The SW-NE rows continue eastward of Crete, but far under the surface. The row of hills farthest east runs along the coast, being therefore called by the Natural Museum "the coastal hill range." It has eroded cross-ways into promontories sandwiched with inlets,, which typically feature a beach. Examples: Erimoupolis, Itanos, Vai beaches, and so on down the coast. The highest elevations are to the south of Cape Plakas, such as Simodi hill hanging over Karoumes beach at elevation (), and

Traostalos Traostalos is the archaeological site of a Minoan peak sanctuary in eastern Crete. Archaeology Traostalos was first excavated in 1963-1964 under Kostis Davaras. Davaras returned in 1978 to continue that work. A rescue excavation from April ...

hill further south at elevation (). The access road of each beach connects to the inland valley, called the Zakros basin. It runs in a N-S direction parallel to the shore of east Crete, from Eremoupolis beach on Cape Sideros in the north, over a distance of about to Amatos beach on the south coast. It is not, however, a single geologic erosional form emptying into the sea south of Crete. Instead it drains from the north and south eastward through Zakro gorge about in the center. The gorge must have broken into a pre-existing non-erosional valley. In fact an scarp along the west of the valley centered about Zakro must be a normal fault feature. It is matched by a possible fault on the other side of the valley. This is not a rift valley, as the elevated former beach terraces in the hills along the ocean suggest the coastal hill range was elevated in geologic time. The Natural History Museum supposes that the rows of elevation are still under compression perpendicular to them, causing the normal faults.

The coastal range and the park system

The 1975 creation of Sitia UNESCO Global Geopark placed much of the Sitia range in the park. It is the major range there, but not the only one. The coastal hill range (east coast) also is in it, so the park comprises all of Crete east of the Mochlos-Livari line. The line trends NW-SE, so that much of Thrypti is actually omitted from the park.

Notes

Citations

Reference bibliography

External links

{{commonscat-inline Mountains of Crete Mountain ranges of Greece Landforms of Lasithi