Roadtripping the Balkans and skiing Greece

Amélie arrived as expected. But in the meanwhile, I haven't really been able to find a car at a decent price with room enough for two to sleep in the back and with a rack on which we would have been able to strap our ski bags.

The RV rental company as contacted me about a camper that they had to rent me, but the price they quoted me was too high to split by only two persons. We thought, we could maybe see if they had anything available. After some negotiation, we settled a really good deal at 40euros/day including everything…. with no invoice of course!

So we moved all our stuff from the big RV into our new home! This smaller version was perfect for only the two of us!

All set up, we left south the same day towards Serbia! We haven't made it 1km from the rental office that we ran out of gas..... The rental fuel us with 1liter! Just enough to make it to the next gas station. I guess someone as really understand when they said that we don't have to bring it back full!

As we entered the ex-Yugoslavian countries, the scenery was familiar as travelling across the Canadian prairies…

The final destination of this roadtrip was Popova Sapka, Macedonia. What? You never heard of Macedonia? Guess it is a bit normal. This small balkan country is nestled between Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Serbia and Greece. I've heard great things about this resort and with new snow on the forecast it seemed like a good time to check it out!

After travelling across the plains and driving through Belgrade, we eventually quitted the flatland of Serbia to enter a much more mountainous landscape.

We drove through some pretty heavy snow in times promising for some great skiing!

We finally slept in Tetovo just 13km short of our final destination.

A short drive uphill led us to this old resort nestled at 1100m. Unfortunately for us, the storm that was forecasted have moved south and was (apparently) hitting Turkey in full strength (don't ask me what those huge storm we drove through have gone!). We both agreed that Turkey was too far to think about it (at least for this time!). 

We were left with some hardpack snow from the latest warm front with not much freshies on top. Even better, the main chair was broken! We figured we could always spend the day exploring the backcountry and see if the north facing aspect were having some better snow.

We found a nice cat-track that was going around the mountain and it seemed a great path to check out different aspects. As we skinned our way around we cross a snowcat full of skiers. Popova Sapka is (I think) the only place in Europe where you can do some cat-ski.

Even if Amelie was really motivated at skiing, she had to agree that there wasn't much good snow this time around. It is too bad since the terrain is nice and the past weeks have been quite snowy.

As we skied out, we met a couple of Swiss with there 2 kids of 7 years old skinning uphill! Those were the youngest fellow I have ever met in the backcountry! They told us about a resort in Greece, Vasilitsa, where they skied the day before and that has good snow! A so motivated couple couldn't be wrong!

We follow their advices and left for the 5+ hour drive south. We made it just short of the border that day and slept in Bitola, Macedonia.

After packing up some supplies at the market and filling up on gas, we cross the border and kept going south.

We eventually made it up to Vasilitsa resort at 14h30 just in time to see that they were closing the lifts. I was rather pissed about not skiing that day, so we skin up the nearby sidecountry. 10-15cm of nice light snow was covering much of the slopes.

We made it to the top of this 530m (1620m-2150m) nice little resort to get a really nice view of the surroundings. With the sun slowly sinking, we started skiing down is some great conditions!

I was pleased by what we were skiing since I wasn't expecting much about the Greek snow!

We eventually made it down to the camper just before dusk. Since this brief introduction was really interesting, we are going to stay around here for one more day to check out what this is really all about!

Cheers,
evans

View Balkan1 in a larger map

More Austrian skiing before the baths of Budapest!

We figured Obergurgl would be great for another day of skiing.

We have spotted a nice gully in between the resorts Hochgurgl and Obergurgl. The motivation level was low as we were making our way up the resort to gets to the good.

Even by using some new motivating strategy, we didn't made it pretty far that day! A huge cliffy dip cut our ascension towards the north faces we were trying to reach.

We turned down without getting any good turns. As we were driving down the valley, we pick-up 7 Germans who were going down the valley! This was certainly a jam-packed RV that made it out the Otztal valley!

After dropping our new friends, we made it to Kitzsteinhorn which is the resort in Austria boasting the biggest vertical drop. The view from the town wasn't any promising as there wasn't much snow on the ground!

After catching 6 different lifts, we finally made it up to the highest point of the mountain at 3000m! This resort feature some really nice terrain that can certainly make a great destination on a good snowstorm.

The top part is a bit flat and good for someone looking for open-groomed runs but the lower part got some nice rocky outcrop everywhere creating gullies and ridges quite fun to ski.

There wasn't much snow reported lately, but we were surprise to find some good snow all over the mountain (and some nicely hidden rocks!).

After an other day topped up with warm-wine, we left to go to the nearby Gastein valley. The more we made it eastward, the tinnier the snowpack.

We drove up to Sportgastein who seemed to have the best terrain. This resort is nestled high up and using only one gondola and one T-bar to serves its terrain. There was certainly not a lot of new snow around but by being creative, we were able to link few good turns here and there.

 

This morning session was the last one for this first part of my European journey. As we had 8-10 hours to make it back to Budapest, we left early to get close the Hungarian capital.

 

 

We saw the valley getting wider and greener while the mountain were now snowless until we were finally down to the plains. We stopped short on the way around Gyor (about 1.5hours from Budapest). We had lunch over some more skiporn before heading out.

As it was the birthday of Jeff on the following day, we took off to celebrate his 29th anniversary. We ended up in a karaoke bar, where Hungarian music was making it's effect on the local crowd to warm them up. We tried to joined the karaoke, but I certainly have to tell you we weren't even closed to nail the lyrics down!

A short drive lead us back to Budapest. After going around town to settle the car rental for my next 2 weeks, we made it up to Szechenyi Fürdö. This old public bath features countless pools at various temperatures, saunas and steam rooms. A great way to relax and enjoy life after a good 2 weeks of non-stop skiing.

As the boys were leaving early this morning, they packed all the stuff before going out for a gigantic food-fest at the Fatal restaurant. The service was as crap as the porting were huge!

After eating too much, we drove out of the downtown to get close to the airport where I drove the boys this morning at around 4h30.

I am now waiting for Amelie who will be landing in about 1.5 hours. The plan is still a bit unsure, but the Balkan seem to be pointing out as our stomping ground for the next 2 weeks. Here's the map of the past two weeks journey.

EuropeEstpart1 

Viszlàt!

evans