Maliovitsa

We went several people and 1 dog from CPSH Maljovitsa (Central Mountain School) to the hut and the summit one Sunday. The weather was forecast to be stormy in the late afternoon. We hoped that the spoiling of the weather would not get to us. There are very good conditions for skiers at the Maliovitsa ski resort - a small track in winter. You can stay at the Maljovitsa hotel.

We parked the car at the CPSh. Parking was not paid for. 1720 m above sea level. We passed through Mecha Polyana and headed for the lodge. Below is also the 'gate' for the start of Rila National Park. Another dog stuck to us. They shared their food with ours, but then they got into a fight and we, in order to separate them, quickly headed up to the hut.

The road is very pleasant, it goes along the valley of the Maliovitsa river. There was a man with dementia with us who walked up front and we watched him. At one point we stopped seeing him. We figured he had hurried up to the lodge. We got on the phone with him and he confirmed. At a fast pace we reached the hut, but our man was gone.

We started calling him, from his information it eventually became clear that he had actually gone off the trail, gone up the screes and squats, convinced that the trail was there. For about an hour and a half we tried to explain to him to come back so we could meet. We left the children, the dog, the backpacks at the hut and two of us went down the river to look for him.

When we had range we could hear each other and direct him down to the river and the live wires. We prepared and took with us life-saving foil, warmers, raincoat, etc. The weather turned bad, it was windy, it didn't rain. We put on waterproof jackets. We started to worry that this person might get lost and we should call the rescue service. And the range was being lost. At last he obeyed us and came down to the river, and as we walked both ways up and down from the point where we had come we found him.

After this adventure, we went up to the hut (1960 m above sea level) once more, took the kids and the dog and quickly went down. We gave up going to the top after all the stress we went through looking for the missing person. After we got into the car it rattled, thundered and rained. We narrowly missed each other. We were happy that everything ended successfully!