13, 14, 15 June – the Three Peaks

I’ll describe it in short here. The Three Peaks means the three highest peaks of the three highest mountains in Bulgaria. These are:
Rila – Musala (2925 m): First highest on the Balkan peninsula
Pirin – Vihren (2914 m): Third highest on the Balkan peninsula
Stara planina – Botev (2376 m)

Pictures from it are uploaded to my Picasa Web albums
This activity was planned by Ivan Ganev – a mountain gid, to check the preparation of a group, that was going to climb the volcanoes in Turkey (in fact they should already be on their way up now). But there were a couple of other people, preparing themselves for Mont Blanc, Elburs (guess who ), etc higher level of mountaineering things.

13th: So we gathered at Vasil Levski staduim in the early morning (06:00) of June 13th and headed to Pirin mountain and Vihren hut. 3 hours later we were ready to start hiking up from Vihren hut. Rain, freezing rain, fog, strong winds were a part of our climb, but a couple of hours later we found ourselves on the third highest peak on the Balkans. This was my first ascent of it, so I was pretty happy.

14th: it was Musala peak in turn. I’ll miss it as an explanation and will mention, that I had some rest in the hut, took some pictures. The rest I’ll leave to those who were there to resolve.

15th: We climber Botev peak with perfect weather till we were half way up. Then it started raining, a little bit after that – freezing rain. Then thunders, fog, etc…. all till we were down to our cars. But anyways – Botev was hiked this day too

Well, with 2 out 3 it was not a bad adventure after all. I felt myself in perfect condition and managed to preserve my energy, keep straight pace, etc – all the things I feel important.