17-20 Oct – Pirin mountain

Well, this short story comes a little late, but as always I have my excuse – lots of work, kinda have common cold, etc. OK, I’m cutting the bullshit off….

We (me, Katya, Iliyan and Niki) started with a 7 hour train trip to Sofia and then 3 1/2 hour bus trip to Bansko. Almost 12 hours after the start we landed in the resort town and got a taxi to Vihren hut. It was lunch time, so we had something to eat, made some coffee and headed for a walk around. A walk is a good name for a 3 hour trip across two lakes: Okoto (The Eye) and Muratovo lake… with some stunning views of peaks around. We got back to the hut at about 5 pm. Dinner, some talking around with other visitors, etc… and we were off to bed at 10 pm. Cold evening, the heating in the bedrooms was poor….

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I woke the band early – about 6 am on Saturday. After a short breakfast, luggage fixing, we headed to Vihren peak at about 7:40. 3 hours later we were at the top. Stayed there for a while to enjoy the views…. it was a beautiful day, perfect weather. After that we had a plan to go to the Koncheto ridge, but the path from the north side of Vihren had lots of snow and ice on it, so we decided to drop from the west side and walk around instead. 2 hours later we were at the saddle between Vihren peak and Kutelo peak. I then decided to give up – the old twisted knee from Elbrus had become a small problem and I thought it was better to not push it further. So I headed down to Bunderitsa hut with a man, who was coming from Koncheto. I was not sorry for that decision – couldn’t make it there, but met a great person, who knew lots of history facts and was a great chat down. We had a couple of beers with him when we went down. Then we met with the group – they had made it to the shelter of Koncheto ridge, and enjoyed it there…. Two of them were first timers on the mountain.

So… that’s about it…. short

Some pictures as always can be found on my Picasa web albums