Setting my new record by Ramsay Banna

My first serious climb

My first serious climb is in less than a month and I have not yet started preparing. I am climbing Mont Blanc and I have in front of me a checklist of requirements I have to meet if I don’t want to walk away from that experience with only a souvenir of the summit.

Luckily, one item on the checklist can be ticked pretty much tomorrow:

The ability to ascend 1500m altitude in a day.

Now, to be more precise, this is an item I plan to find out if I can tick tomorrow.

Today I am in a town 400m above sea level, within 10min of the start of a path that will take me to 2300m altitude. How convenient is that? (I wish I could say well planned..)

The mountain is the Balkan range, (also called Stara Planina — Old Mountain) and the summit is Botev, the highest in the mountain range and a challenging one all year around despite the not-so-impressive height. Barren, round and shrouded in cloud for most of the time, it takes victims every year. One reason is its shape. Before renaming it after a famous revolutionary, it was called Jumruk-chal, or Fist Mountain. At the top, it looks like a rolling hill, a pasture, pleasantly round and unremarkable. Drift a bit away from the top however and your chances of survival quickly diminish as most of its faces consist of vertical drops, up to 1000 m, laced with 200–300m waterfalls. Spectacular — as long as you are not looking at them on your way down pulled by gravity.

Fog

It does not help that it is in fog for most of the year, so thick that you might be standing next to the 100m radio tower and think the aliens have taken it. A complete whiteout, making it impossible to tell down from up or gauge the distance and sizes of objects. Oh, and it also holds a record for being the windiest place in the country.

I plan to be up and down in a day and I am packing for all seasons.

I am not a morning person, so I start at 7am, which to a purist might sound like a good reason to cancel the trek that day.

The first 4–5 hours are a gruelling uphill made worse by the lack of trees for most of the stretch and the occasional skull (animal’s, I hope) — reminding me how thirsty I am and how stupid it was to assume there would be water on the way. At around 1800m altitude, I reach the top of the ridge and get a rewarding view of the alpine ridge of Stara Planina. What follows is the most enjoyable part of the trek, getting in and out of forests, crossing springs (water, finally!), alternating easy climbs and descents and taking in the amazing views in each direction.

Botev

ou get peeks of the summit every now and then too — Botev is easily recognised by the striped red and white radio tower perched on top of it. Together with the weather station, it has been home to scientists for close to 6 decades. I am a bit put off by the fact that what I consider a great adventure is seen as a commute by many of them.

Arrival

The arrival at the Botev Refuge marks a change in pace, and slope incline, unfortunately. It sits 300m below the summit and this final ascent is an absolute trudge. The path is eroded by melting snow each year and if you look up you risk stepping on an unstable rock and breaking an ankle. Not that there is anything to look at — on the way up that is. A massive hill, nothing to break the monotony — not a single tree — and a tower marking the final destination which looks deceptively close and makes that last hour torture.

On Top

Once at the top, I am rewarded with amazing views in every direction. The mountain stretches east and west and cuts the country in half — if you look north, you can see the great Danube river on a clear day. To the south, the Aegean sea — or so they say… Its either not a clear day or my eyesight has taken a hit after all these years of studying.

But you don’t need to look that far because the range of summits east and west, lining up the ridge, are simply spectacular.

I am acutely aware that this is the halfway point of my trek and that most accidents happen on the way down. And that I am so tired I can just lie down and fall asleep, right there between the grazing cattle with cow dung looking like a really attractive pillow at that moment.

Going down

On the way down I appreciate the views I didn’t get a chance to see while I was dragging myself uphill, so I stop for a late lunch and take it all in. The valley between the mountains is glittering with numerous lakes. A helicopter is doing rounds from one of the lakes to a nearby forest which has caught fire, an unfortunate common sight in the summer. It looks like a little bug, hovering over the water and dipping its bucket then zooming towards the smoke to dump it on top. From this altitude you only see beauty. None of the abandoned concrete ruins which pollute the small villages, remnants of 40 yrs of building a doomed political system and unattractive skyline.

A shuffle next to me brings me back to the here and now. I turn and face a muzzle. I freeze, mind going blank. In preparation for the hike, I spent some time reading what manner of wildlife I could expect to meet on the mountain and every article warning about the big brown bear (while making a point to mention it is docile in comparison to the world-famous Bulgarian sheepdog). I find myself wishing it is the bear, but that’s distinctly a dog’s muzzle I am staring at.

I go through my options and come up with a list of one. Stay still and hope the dog thinks I am an inanimate object. Luckily it takes only a minute for the shepherd to appear because I can’t trust my shaky muscles to keep the mannequin illusion. He calls to his dog (it is a she, if gender is still observed in dog world and she has a sweet, albeit almost extinct name ‘Todorka’ — the Slavic equivalent of Dorothea, a reversed-syllable Theodora). Dorothea bounds in his direction happily but my relief is short-lived because she decides to inflict more terror on me and is back breathing in my neck.

Karakachans – Ramsay! what to do?

What makes Karakachans such good sheep-guarding dogs is how smart they are and the training they go through. Used in the past as border army watchdogs, they get trained to mistrust humans and keep them frozen in place until the arrival of the men in charge, usually carrying big guns. Dorothea’s owner, it seems, is either from the anti-gun, we-are-all-brothers lobby, or the world’s worst dog trainer because Dorothea might look like a Karakachan but identifies as a Pomeranian. After an inhibited display of joy át getting to know me and appreciation for half of my sandwich, we part ways with Dorothea and I continue on my way down.

Nine hours later

As correctly expected, the worst part of the entire trek is the last descent, the one that I hated on the way up and loath even more on the way down. I think I am seeing a lot more skulls but by then I might be hallucinating. It’s a relentless downhill and no attempt to ease the burn in my muscles by running fast, flapping my arms or walking backwards, skater style, makes the slightest difference.

Nine hours after starting the trek I arrive back to what I expect to be a hero’s welcome. Most sources put this as anything between 11 and 15 hours trek and I have done it in 9, breaks included. What I am met with instead is the stony silence and hostile faces of my fellow travellers. Much later, when I have been forgiven, I learn that I omitted to tell them my destination when discussing my plan for the day. A hike, it seems, is not what they would call a 33km round trek. But that’s a few days later. Tonight I just wash the dishes in the hope that this is accepted as sufficient repentance for my sins.

By Ramsay Banna

www.ramsaybanna.com.au