Well, another mountain time, another short mountain story. For a couple of weeks before I left my job we’ve been planning a visit to the mountains. This time it should be Rila, why not. And especially Musala. Unfortunately the weather forecast was not with us. Since the beginning of the week it has been like that: “Since Sunday the weather will be great”, “Saturday and Sunday there will be thunderstorms over the mountains”…. Well, who wouldn’t have started Risky but…

And we started early Sunday morning, at 3 AM. Me, Mü and Dido. Three friends and one car. 5 something hours later we were at Borovets. Fog, drizzling, nasty weather. Considering rain has been with us for all our trip until now… we started thinking: Do we really want to go in the mud of the Musala pathway. I got the idea of asking the lift people how the weather was ‘up there’. They told that it’s cold, but it’s clear, however very unstable. So…. why not – pay 10 leva each for a ski-lift ticket and be driven quickly up. This saved us 3 hours of muddy uphill. When we dropped and Yastrebets (2369 m), the weather was like that:

The first 30-40 minutes until Musala hut were great – no rain, almost no wind. Just before the hut it started raining very little. We stopped for some rest, some warm soup. And decided to continue, even though the rain continued. Rain, fog, wind, for the next 1 1/2 hours. Just before we got to the “Ledeno ezero” shelter (or hut now) it stopped raining and the weather cleared a little bit.

The hut was completely empty, excluding the host and the woman that helps her. The many tourists and groups we met already were somewhere down the mountain. Understandable – after all the ski-lift doesn’t work on Monday and Tuesday, and they didn’t want to go all the way down Musala pathway (steep downhill). It was very cold, even for Musala, even for beginning of July. This year the “summer” up there is coming a little bit late. So we got a very small room (usually used for special guests only ) with a heater. The bad news is that it’s with two beds only, but we’ll make it somehow. The rest of the day was pretty much eat, sleep a bit, eat some more, sleep some more. And this until 6 AM the other day. Oh, great sun, sneaking from the small window of our room.

I had to jump and try to wake the others – of course, we have so many things ahead of us for the day. But our joy didn’t go for longer – clouds, fog, chill wind again got around the high mountain.

Still, it was doable. And we started up. Just to make it 5 minutes before Musala peak. A steep, frozen uphill with a lot of snow still remaining. This is where me and Mü headed down and Dido stormed up the summit. When we got down I called him – he made it safe, took a pic and is heading down now.

Some rest, packing quickly and we had to head down to Borovets. Our car was waiting there for us.

But not before one last picture with the shelter as background:

And we got to the resort just in time for a perfect weather down the mountain – no fog, no rain, just great. Unfortunately our muscles were already sore, so…. enough mountain trip, instead we’ll transfer that to our ‘auto-tourism’, in which we are already so good…. but for this – later.