Ski traverses in Bulgaria

• Mid-February to mid-March
• The Pirin and Rila mountains offer the best terrain.
• Sun is strong.
• Snowline can be high 1000m–1800m.
• Wind is constantly blowing.
• Due to the wind, Good conditions in the Alpine are rare.
• Most terrain is gentle.
• Treeline is high. Pinus mura can be found up to 2500m, but is stunted at this elevation.
• Forests grow thick. Large wild rose bushes are common. Fallen branches are everywhere. Bushwhacking is common, and care is needed when skiing in the forest.
• Map data is readily available and can be high quality.
• The hut infrastructure and hut culture is great, often better than that of the Alps.
• No helicopter rescue is available as of 2022.
• Wildlife sticks to lower elevations.
• Snow tends to be a little wet.
• The book Skiing the Balkans by Dimitar Dimitrov is very useful as an introduction to backcountry skiing in Bulgaria.
• Buses, trains, and hitchhiking (if you speak Bulgarian) work well.

It is often unclear if a certain hut has a warden at a certain time. Unserviced huts, which are easily accessible e.g. without special equipment such as those close to ski resorts (Banderitsa Hut) are often locked. Unserviced alpine huts almost always are unlocked and have a room with many beds, blankets, and a wood stove, with plenty of wood. Good practice is to leave the facilities more orderly than found, and slip some money under the locked door of the warden's office.

Due to the uncertainty and difficulty of a rescue, a conservative approach to these mountains is advised. No helicopter rescue is available as of 2022.

Maps of slope angle classes can be inaccurate, maybe due to the lack of ground truth data, but are sufficient. I recommend CalTopo because it has better slope class angles in the Pirin and Rila Mountains than competing offers, as of writing this in late 2022.

Iskar Tour maps are the best printed option. However, they are very delicate for use en route, and require forethought how to stow and access them practically. They can be difficult to obtain outside of Bulgaria.

The website bgmountains.org has routinely updated map tiles for offline use with a mapping app such as CalTopo. These are the most detailed electronic maps for navigating routes in Bulgaria. The download is free, so a donation is recommended. They also offer a map tiling service at https://kade.si:

https://bgmtile.kade.si/{Z}/{X}/{Y}.png 

The best combination for mapping data, as of writing this in late 2022, would be to add this tiling service to your CalTopo layers and combine that with CalTopo's most accurate slope angle class. A wiser me takes PDF printouts of my CalTopo custom maps, when CalTopo or my phone fails to work.

For example, my notes help me to hit the ground running, as well as share them with you. https://caltopo.com/m/6JPNRK1

Wolves have cohabitated Bulgaria with humans since the beginning of our time. Wolves fear and avoid humans. Likewise, humans fear and avoid wolves. Mind your manners, and you may have a problem with a dog, but not a wolf.

I may have seen one wolf, which was interested in a dog, which was following me and had a limp. The wolf was not interested in me.

I saw a few chamois. Otherwise, I saw many tracks of boar, deer, wolves, but no bear tracks.