Awful weather from the very beginning couldn’t stop me and Ivan to try and go to Kupena peak. Although we couldn’t reach it (due to the cold and the thick fog) we climbed to Ambaritsa peak in Stara planina – 2166 meters. I’m extremely happy, because this was Ivan’s first major peak.

So, here I am – standing near the shelter on the top.

on top of Ambaritsa peak

~HERE~

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.

Sokolna hut – view from below.

We got to the hut at noon. I’ll keep the rest of the day short – party, lunch, bath, party, music We got to bed at about 11 PM.

The next day I woke up earlier than the group, walked around, took some pictures (you can see all of them at my Google Picasa Albums).

A long day it was – we climbed all peaks from Triglav massive. All of them – above 2000 meters altitude.On the picture below you can see two of them – Goliam Kademlia (2276 m – the second highest in Stara planina) and Malyk Kademlia (2228 meters).

We arrived at Tyja hut at about 6 PM not exactly tired – rather happy from the day we left behind. And the same story happened – party, bath, dinner, party… etc. Nice evening it was again

The third day we planned to climb Maragidik peak (1891 m) and descent to Apriltsi town to travel to Rousse. We left at about 8:30 again, but the fog wasn’t planned – we lost our way a couple of times before we found Maragidik and then decided to go back and get the traditional descent to Apriltsi. At about 13:30 (1:30 PM) we were at the town, but unfortunately our second group (me and two of the girls) missed the last bus to Troyan (where the train station was). So we payed to a private car to drive us to Troyan – and got there on time.

Ok, didn’t exactly follow it from begining to end, but you can check out my Picasa albums – I guess they show more.