The Pindus (also Pindos or Pindhos; ; ; ) is a mountain range located in Northern Greece and Southern Albania. It is roughly 160 km (100 miles) long, with a maximum elevation of 2,637 metres (8652') (Mount Smolikas). Because it runs along the border of Thessaly and Epirus, the Pindus range is known colloquially as the spine of Greece. The mountain range stretches from near the Greek-Albanian border in southern Albania, entering the Epirus and Macedonia regions in northern Greece down to the north of the Peloponnese. Geologically it is an extension of the Dinaric Alps, which dominate the western region of the Balkan Peninsula. History of the name Historically, the name Pindos refers to the mountainous territory that separates the greater Epirus region from the regions of Macedonia and Thessaly. According to John Tzetzes (a 12th-century Byzantine writer), the Pindos range was then called Metzovon. When translated (between 1682/83 and 1689) to a more conversational (colloquial) language the initial praise to St. Vissarion, which was drafted in 1552 by , he wrote: “A mountain called by the Greeks Pindos is the same mountain which is called Metzovon in Barbarian” and further down the same text he adds “this mountain, Metzovon, separates the Ioannina region from the Thessaloniki region.” By the eighteenth century, there had been identification of the name Metsovo with the Pindos mountain range (in a French encyclopedia of 1756). BY 1825, the traveller John Cam Hobhouse was writing that "…the latter mountains, now known by the name of Metzovo, can be no other than Pindus itself…" while a patriarchal document of 1818 states: "Because the high mountain of Pindos in Epirus, that is commonly called Messovon...". The word Pindos was used more in literary sources, while the folk name for the mountain range from the Middle Ages up to the 19th century was either "Metsovo" or "the mountains of Metsovo". Most probably this name was not meant to indicate the whole range as it is meant today, but only its central part between the area of Aspropotamos and the springs of the Aoös River. This part coincides with the mountainous region which the ancient Greeks used to call Pindos. Major mountains The most notable mountains in the range are Mount Grammos, Mount Smolikas, Mount Vasilitsa, Tymfi or Gamila, Lakmos or Peristeri, the Athamanika or Tzoumerka mountains, and the Agrafa mountains. Some mountains in Southern Greece are also