The rainy summer of Europe had followed us to Bulgaria. During our four-day stop, the weather took over and heavy rains filled and almost overflowed the rivers of Vratsa. The flooding made travel very difficult especially for our Petzl caravan of buses full of people and gear.
But, our little French team had high spirits and when we arrived in Vratsa, Gérome Pouvreau made us his famous ‘Tartiflette’ with all the good cheese he brought with him from France!
Climbing in Vrasta seemed to be impossible for the next few days as the limestone walls had turned into waterfalls. We took this as an opportunity to explore and over the next two days we ended up climbing in a huge cave in Karlukovo, which was an amazing experience. It was still raining and the conditions were quiet wet, but with our group’s motivation we climbed some amazing routes.
The four days of rain slowly started to get to us, but then, thankfully, the sun came out and we finally got the chance to see the beautiful landscape of Vratsa.
The next three days we climbed in the sun on perfect limestone and our hearts were feeling the joy of climbing.
I loved this place so much. The mixture between sport climbing in these awesome Bulgarian mountains made me really excited.
I slowly felt comfortable with my climbing again and got back to a good level of ability. I did several routes around eight degrees of difficulty and it felt wonderful. I enjoyed every single move and really loved the feeling of the power coming back to my body.
The Bulgarian people were amazing!
And once again, we were back in the bus and on the road dodging potholes, but this seems to be really common in the eastern countries…;-)