January Hiking on Vitosha, Part 1

While the rest of Europe (and much of the eastern U.S.) froze their New Year's tootsie's off, due to a cyclical weakening of the North Atlantic Oscillation, Sofia had spring-like weather. A week ago it was in the upper 50s F, warm enough that all our snow melted. Terrible skiing weather, but nice enough for some mountain hiking. ACS colleagues Brett and Betsy organized an outing, along with a new friend of ours Sam, an American working at the U.S. embassy, and one of his Bulgarian colleagues Alex.
The hike started from the village of Zhelenitsa, on the east flank of Vitosha, about a 25 minute drive from campus. We headed up through some trees for about 2 hours to a beautiful area above treeline (windy!). We had lunch at a surprisingly large hiija (hut/refuge), where you could spend the night as well as get a hot meal. There were a bunch of Bulgarians who had dragged their skis up here, only to trudge up 10 vertical feet to slide down an icy slope. Desperate for powder, I guess. The folks jumping off the windblown snow bank were having more fun, I think.




The view to the west, as we looked uphill. The hijja is not visible, but basically on the right side of that ridge.



Brett and Betsy (above)


Betsy getting blown by the wind (above), Brett enjoying the windiness (below).

The view to the south (below).


The view east, as Alex makes his way up the hill (below).


Not so fun: upper right of photo, folks trying to sidestep up gentle, icy slope to ski (Whee!) back down. More fun (foreground): Jumping off snowbank.


The mountain hostel/hut (hijja).



Totally unrelated to hiking (but saw this at the front gate of campus on our way home). Some of the stray dogs had puppies. That's what they do. This will obnoxious in a few months, but right now it's pretty cute.