With the help of PowerPoint, English Professor Bruce Guernsey recalled his triumphant trek up Mount Olympus that culminated in a show of defiance toward Zeus.

Guernsey said at the onset of his climb in 1991, he was having a difficult year, struggling with both family troubles and the United States being at war.

“It was a difficult time to be in such a foreign place,” he said.

He said he and his climbing partner experienced every type of weather imaginable on their ascent up the mountain.

“When we started out, it was brilliant sunshine,” he said. “About two hours into the hike, we heard Zeus for the first time. Suddenly, and I mean suddenly, it started to rain so hard…The whole place was trembling.”

On the second day of the climb, he said he and his partner stood under blue skies, looking down at a thick fog and up at a snow storm.

Guernsey said the mountain’s highest peak, Mitikas, which stands at 9,574 feet, is extremely steep and difficult to climb. Known as the throne of Zeus, Mitikas resembles a crater-like seat tipped on its side, as shown in a photograph.

Showing a slide of himself standing at the top of Olympus, Guernsey said he liked the photograph “because I actually climbed a mountain and I did something I didn’t think I could do.”

In a moment of triumph, he said he lobbed a snowball at the throne of Zeus.

Guernsey said climbing the mountain helped him to come to some conclusions about the gods, whose careless, stormy actions were a result of their immortality.

He read the portion from “The Odyssey” when Odysseus turns down Calypso’s offer of eternal life.

“It seems to me what the gods have given us is mortality,” he said, explaining that the reason humans’ emotions are so precious is that life is finite.

Guernsey said his favorite word in any language is the Greek word “klafseeyalos,” which means simultaneous laughter and tears. He said this ambiguity of feelings is embodied for him in Homer’s work.