In the rugged wilderness of northern Greece, an ambitious mission to trace the remnants of a long-forgotten World War II aircraft ended in tragedy when 62-year-old Christos Stavrianidis fell to his death during a remote expedition.
The seasoned hiker, known for his deep knowledge of the Rhodope mountains, was on a trek through the Fraktou forest on Monday when an encounter with a wild bear triggered a chain of events that proved fatal. Local rescue teams later recovered his body at the bottom of an 800-meter (2,600-foot) ravine. He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Kavala General Hospital, according to emergency authorities.
Stavrianidis was accompanied by fellow hiker and longtime friend Dimitris Kioroglou, who recounted the harrowing moment the bear emerged. “I barely had time to react,” Kioroglou told local outlet NewsIT. “My dog distracted the animal, and I managed to deploy pepper spray. But the bear veered off toward Christos.”
While the circumstances are still being reviewed, local wildlife experts have suggested that the bear’s behavior was defensive, not predatory. “This wasn’t an attack in the traditional sense,” explained Panos Stefanou, a spokesman for wildlife organization Arcturos. “The animal was likely startled and sought to neutralize what it saw as a threat.”
The pair had set out to chart a safer and more navigable path to a historic aircraft wreckage buried deep within the forest — the remnants of a Greek military plane that crash-landed in the region over 70 years ago. Stavrianidis, who rediscovered the site last August, had taken it upon himself to make the location accessible to the public.
He had spoken passionately about the find. “It’s an untouched piece of history,” he told local media last year. “The fuselage is almost perfectly preserved. It belongs to the forest — a monument to both nature and memory.”
Stavrianidis’s death marks a somber moment in the story of the warplane he worked so tirelessly to share with the world — a reminder of the perils still lurking in the wild landscapes where history lies hidden.
