Friday, June 19, 2015

Bulgaria with the boys!

Every spring we leave our wives, girlfriends, mothers and children at home in order to explore foreign mountains. This unique one-week experience is always full of ski-touring, exotic traveling, culinary excess and most important quality time with the lads. Logistics are fairly simple – we pack our ski-touring gear, onboard the legendary 20-year-old Volvo and drive. Your first guess might be Switzerland, France, Austria or some other country in the Alps. However, we are always attracted towards the East and South, which can offer more solitude in the mountains, exciting culture and very important for the lads – more than reasonable prices. The whole trip (8 days) costed around 280 euros per person, including everything, and I have to add that we were only choosing hotels with a descent spa or at least a sauna.

After Slovakia, Bosnia and Montenegro in the previous years, Bulgaria was the next in line. The country has two spectacular mountain ranges in the Southwest – Pirin and Rila. They both have countless peaks above 2500m and receive abundant snowfall.

We used the rainy days for exploring Bulgarian cities and relaxing in the local spas. During the sunny period we crossed the Pirin range and slept in basic but friendly mountain huts, which could always offer heavy "kachkaval" and icy beer:

Day 1: Ski lift to Bezbog hut (2240m) and climbing/skiing the Bezbog peak (2662m)

Day 2: Crossing the nearby lake, descent to the valley, Đano (2657m), descent towards Northwest, Momin dvor (2722m), descent to Tevno ezero hut (2512m)

Day 3: Crossing under Valjaviška čuka (2652m), long descent into Demjanica valley, no-name peak above Tevno Vasilaško lake, descent towards East, Tipiz (2645m), descent to Demjanica hut (1895m)
 
Day 4: Veliki poležan (2862m), descent Northeast, Disilica (2700m), long descent to our car at Goce Delčev (1412m).
 

Demjanica, a long and beautiful valley, offered us tons of powder:

 
The Rila Monastery deep in the mountains is one of the oldest still operating monesteries in the world:
 

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