Not much skiing, but some great discovery!

Just after posting, we drove towards Malyovitsa, Bulgaria. According to the information of GoogleMaps, we drove towards Rila valley.

This ride up this small valley took us about 3 hours until we realized that we weren't in the right valley. Actually, to make it up to this small resort with some apparently good backcountry access, you have to make it almost to Borovets.

We finally arrived to make it up to the resort at about 15h00….

The resort is small and by talking to some fellow coming back from the backcountry, it takes about 3 hours to make it up to the top of the run.

We were so frustrated to have miss a nice ski day, that we left just some after some snack towards Brezovica, Kosovo.

I have heard the mountain range around the resort was steep and gnarly. So we made the drive out of Bulgaria, into Macedonia and finally in Kosovo.

 

We entered the small Republic without problem and slept in the small town just next to the ski operation.

As we showed up, the lift were pretty much all closed but the small T-Bar. There are a lot of lift that haven't run in a long time! With a nice sun shinning up and the warm temperatures, we started skinning unto the upper slopes.

 

The lift serve terrain is just a fraction of what it was when the resort was in full operation.

 It is some great news for someone willing to hike up! We made it up to an open bowl face with steep terrain and slightly melted down from the sun.

The turns were great but our best findings was the adjacent mountain you can access.

Just in a slight distance, the mountain are steep and offers some of the best skiing terrain I have seen in the Balkans! With the time ticking, we maded it our plan for the following day. The turns we made were great and we lapped it a few times under the warm sun. We make it back to the RV with great plans for the next day!

We woked up to the always bothering sounds of rain falling onto our rooftop… In desolation, we had a long breakfast talking of our options. 

As we were doing so, the rain stopped and the weather cleared out!!! With our late start, we agreed that we were too late to make it up to the terrain we scouted the day before and head towards the bowl next to the one we skied.

 

We founded again some nice warmed up snow on which we only had time to make one lap…

With the time flying by, we figured Kopaonik in Serbia can be a nice destination. We finally made it up to the border around 22h00. We left the border of Kosovo without problem… but never made it into Serbia! Since Kosovo isn't recognize as a country by Serbia, the border patrol didn't recognize the stamp we got as we made it into Kosovo.

Our options were either to drive all the way south into Macedonia (14+hours) or southwest to Montenegro(10+ hours). From either those two country, we would be able to enter Serbia. After telling us not to make the drive at night because the road was robbery-proned and too dangerous at night, we went sleeping in a truck stop he pointed us as a safe spot to sleep.

We chose to drive to Montenegro. If you ever try to go into Montenegro from Kosovo, don't chose the road GoogleMap will give you as it will leads you onto a small winding road more suited for a 4x4 than a RV.

We agreed to make it back to Pec for some pizza and beer to change our minds.

After driving up into Montenegro by the main road that was going toward Rozaje, we eventually reach Kopaonik 24hours later…

 

We again woked up to the sounds of the falling rain… for our last ski day, we were left with with the clouds just 50m in the sky, 1Celsius and the wind blowing at 50km/h!

We made the decision to make our way back to Belgrade to spend our day and to get closer to Budapest from which we would fly from.

The city is not the greatest city I have visit and after spending the afternoon wandering around its street, we made the decision to drive towards Budapest in which we will spend our last day visiting.

I am writing this last ski-report from the rest area just next of the Hungarian-Serbian border. I'll write you the wrap up of the last winter, once I'll be back!

Cheers,
evans