Mishu came from our hometown of Sliven to Sofia, and we decided to spend the whole Saturday on Vitosha. We had planned to do three peaks, but somewhere along the way it became clear that two were enough. The third could wait for another adventure.
I had prepared for proper cold. This part of Vitosha is usually misty and windy enough to make me regret underestimating it. Instead, the day gave us the complete opposite.
Sofia was covered in mist and felt cold below, but the higher we drove towards the hut, the warmer it became. At some point we simply broke through the cloud layer. The city disappeared underneath us, and what had looked like miserable grey weather from below became a sea of clouds stretching across the capital.
For the first time, I could properly see this part of the mountain. It was so warm that I eventually took my shirt off and continued through the snow under the sun. That was not how I had imagined the first proper winter-looking hike of the season.
We made our way towards Cherni Vruh, at 2,290 metres, and then Skoparnika, at 2,226 metres, with snow covering more and more of the landscape. Last winter was when I really started falling in love with winter ascents. Seeing that white carpet return brought back a feeling I had been waiting for since the season ended.
There is something different about walking through snow. Everything looks cleaner. The ground loses its usual colours and shapes, and the mountain becomes simpler somehow. White, rock, sky. And quieter. The snow softens the sounds around us until even familiar places feel a little more remote.
As we continued towards Skoparnika, the clouds below us slowly began to rise. At first they were far underneath, with the landscape clear above them. Then they reached the ridges. We could still see clearly, but they were getting closer.
One cloud started rolling across the mountains in front of us, slowly swallowing the landscape. It looked almost unreal, like something straight out of a Ghibli film. We stood there watching it approach. Less than fifteen minutes later, it had reached us too.
The clear mountain we had been walking through disappeared. Suddenly, we were inside the cloud, surrounded by mist again. That transition was probably my favourite part of the entire day.
We had started below the clouds in cold Sofia, climbed above them into warmth and sun, walked through the first real snow of the season, and then watched the clouds climb the mountain until they caught us again.
The hike itself was light: around 12 kilometres, a few hundred metres of elevation gain, two summits and good company. Nothing extreme. But walking through the snow that day, I felt something I had missed.
The silence, the cold air, the white covering everything. That strange sense that winter changes not only the mountain, but the way I experience it. Something wakes up in me when I am there. A feeling that simply says: this is it. This is what I live for.
And for one Saturday, with a good friend beside me and the clouds moving over Vitosha, that was more than enough.