Tag: Vitosha

Autumn hike to Cherni Vrah

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

The little one (7) asked to go to Cherni Vrah. After climbing Vihren and Musala, he’s now planning and nagging about going to other peaks, like Mount Olympus in Greece. I was a bit under the weather, with a slightly inured ankle and a neck that can’t turn right. But none of that prevented us from doing the hike. We went to the top. It was beautiful and we had good time. It felt very easy.

The highlight of our trip was that we found lots of blueberries and some rare raspberries. The raspberries were delicious but scarce, the blueberries were a bit overripe but abundant. The red bushes below are all blueberries.

The top was cold, some of the puddles were frozen. We have some time until the first winter conditions, though, as despite the cold, I don’t expect snow before December. I hope to have the chance to go to the top again this year.

Cherni Vrah

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

One of my New Year’s resolutions was that I would hike to Cherni Vrah three times this year. Making steps in the city is easy – it doesn’t take much time, it’s flat, there’s food and water everywhere. Hiking is hard, it takes at least 45 minutes to reach the starting point. Then you drink what you carry. And last but not least, my hidden goal was to make the entire family go to the mountains.

Took us forever but we managed to do it with the kids today, so it couldn’t be better. They didn’t complain too much, which was also nice.

If one thing didn’t go well is that I need to wash my new white sneakers because I stepped into the mud several times. These are my only comfortable shoes at the moment and I made a sacrifice for the successful hike. Maybe this will motivate me to look for a backup pair next week.

Alpine Rockcress

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

This wild flower can be purchased as a garden plant in Sofia. We found it at around 2000 meters altitude. It’s called something like stone-loving Arabis in Bulgarian. There were lots of rocks around it.

Cold

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

We had a successful third hike this spring. We took a very adventurous path this time, one between the peaks Golyam and Malak Rezen. I suspect most people in Sofia do not know that the peaks they see every day are called like that, and are not Cherni Vrah. Also, even those who know, probably don’t know the most scenic route to the top is between them. Going to the top usually happens from the left or the right of both peaks, and the middle looks like a giant impenetrable rock. There are, however, paths in the middle. We took one.

The path was steep but fine, with the exception of one very large snow patch, which we had to circle around through the shrubs. We were completely alone until the Golyam Rezen peak, only saw one person who was maybe an hour ahead of us and chose to crawl on the snow patch. We saw his lonely steps on the snow.

Once we reached the open area, the wind was mind-blowing and cold, perhaps around 0°C. We were prepared with windproof jackets, gloves, hats, and even one face mask for the little one, which he used as a scarf.