Climbing Musala

On July 9th 2011, I forayed into the wilderness of the Rila Mountains, along with fellow volunteer Erin, to climb the tallest mountain in Bulgaria. At 2,925.40m (9,597.77ft), Musala was named during Ottoman rule; 'Mus Allah' meaning "the mountain of Allah". We started from the skiing village of Borovets at 1350m at around 9:30am.

At the trail head outside Borovets

The bridge over this water is where we
stretched, since thats good for you

The first portion of the hike was up a dirt road, sometimes steep sometimes almost flat, through the tallest pine trees I've seen in this country. We were in the shade for most of this portion and the going was good. We took one backpack to share between us, and we switched every hour who was carrying it.

tall pine tree

our first water break

Once we came to the edge of the trees there was a small stream, a sign that made no sense, and a picnic table. We stopped and had some water and trail mix (thanks mom for sending the craisins) . The next part was, in my opinion, the 2nd hardest part of the whole trek. It was not particularly steep, but completely in the sun and very hot.

sunlit path

Alphabet Soup Sign

Then we got to a very awkwardly marked turn. It looked like nothing more then a tiny dried up stream bed going off to the left, but that's where the red trail marking arrows were pointing, and the tiny rusted white sign that said МУСАЛА. Seems pretty straight forward I know, but I shoulda taken a picture of it one could understand our hesitation We did reluctantly turn though, and it turned out to be the right way. It was peaceful, we saw no soul for an hour (which had us worried close to the end of this portion), and there were trail markers the whole way.

trail after we left the road

wondering about the trail

Musala from a distance

frolicking like in the sound of music

crossing a stream

the first site of others/buildings in an hour

Then we decided to take a lunch break at the next pole (pictured above) if we could not see buildings from it; and alas, right there in front of us was the first mountain hut and the first two of the 7 Rila Lakes. I audibly sighed, as our water supplies were dwindling. We took a break there for lunch and to fill up our water bottle with very very cold and awesomely tasting water fresh from the fountain. Then we went on a hike through the rest of the lakes up to the second mountain hut, Ледено Езеро or ice lake, located at next to the highest of the 7 Rila Lakes.

Lunch spot

height of first mountain hut

one of the lakes

another lake

rock climbing

2nd mountain hut

Ice Lake

The last stretch up to the summit was the hardest part, and possibly one of the hardest things I've ever done. The air is thin up there, and less oxygen to already tired muscles going up a steep and pebblely path meant a lot of small breaks and very few steps in between. We did make it to the top though, in 6 hours form the trail head outside Borovets, 1350m to 2925m; 4429ft to 9597ft, which I think is pretty good.

the last little bit

panorama

the other side

victorious rock piles

adding a rock

adding a rock

summit marker

We made it back down a lot faster since we took a short cut. You see, there is a gondola from the Borovets town center up to the first mountain hut. Most people take this up in order to cut out the first 3.5 hours of the hike. This is cheating. We did take it down though since we needed to catch the last bus from Borovets to Samokov where we were staying the night.

walk to gondola

gondola