Tossal Bovinar

Aquesta vegada anem cap als Estanys de la Pera. Arrenquem tard de les pistes d'Aransa (són quasi les 10 quan ens hi posem) i ens dirigim cap als Estanys de la Pera i regufi, on tardem quasi 2 hores a arribar-hi.
Com apreta el sol...un cop al refu anem direcció NE per les amples pales direcció el Pic dels Estanyons. Hi arribem marejats del sol que cau..Treiem pells i davallem uns 100 metres per tornar-les a posar i arribar al Tossal Bovinar (2841m) i el seu veí de la frontera.
Vistes espectaculars d’Andorra, malgrat les motos de neu aixafen les vistes i el silenci.
D'allà descens directe per la Sud (amb neu primevera bastant acceptable) fins empalmar amb la pista d'esquí de fons. Intinerari circular molt interessant.

Pep, Sam, Eloi i Joel

Esquí de Muntanya a Eslovènia

From Girona to Ljubljana:

Saturday 28th:

Two months have already passed by since we received a call from the FEEC association telling us that we were the chosen candidates to go to Slovenia. Finally the expected Saturday 28th of February arrived; and our unforgettable week starts off! The plane towards Venice leaves at 4:10pm from Girona airport, and Furi (with whom I have only met once before) decides to meet up earlier during the morning in Girona, so we can visit the city. After a quick lunch, Davy drops us to the airport where Ryanair flight departs on time. We arrive at Treviso airport and afterwards to Mestre train station where we have to wait until 9.30pm to take a five-hour night train to Ljubljana. I will remember that three waiting hours as the worst part of the trip, due to the weird people with whom we shared the improvised room of the cold train station.

After a long time spent there, the Rumanian train arrived and we stepped in, with our entire luggage on. To our happy surprise the train was equipped with comfortable cabins where we could sleep for almost the whole way to Ljubljana, except during the several “passport controls” by the Slovenian police coming into the cabin pretty often.

At 2.00am we reached Ljubljana train station and we started to look for some place to sleep over that night. We first thought about the only warm place opened at that time inside the building, but as it was quiet scaring because of the homeless people around, we thought about it twice and finally we could find a private room in some tourist-office near the rails, that luckily had the hall opened. Although it was not very comfortable, nobody disturbed us for the whole night, since we recieved Jure’s sms at 3.00am, assuring us that he would pick us up next morning at 8.30am, so we could sleep through as kids until 7.30am.

Sunday 8th of March

The train arrived at Victoria station on time (7am). We looked for a place were we could leave our luggage and started visiting the city. As the sleeping in the train was not so good, we slept a bit more than half an hour in the middle of San Marco Square. After waking up with some tourist staring at us, we went on with our visit. For lunch we tried a “sinpa” but they found out and after an icecream, we headed towards the Piazzale Roma where we took the bus to Treviso airport, checked in, and finally took the plane to Girona, where Ian picked us up.

We will keep nice memories from the week we spent in Komna. Lanscape memories but also memories of meeting with people from differnt countries and cultures gathered for the same passion: ski touring.

Saturday 7th of March

On Saturday the snow looked pretty good and we managed to get our entire luggage back to the cable car at Dom na Komni. The landscape was amazing, the sun shinning and our week about to expire…

Once we reached Dom na Komni hut, the guides saw that a lot of people were climbing up through the track we were suppose to use to get down. They said that there was problem with avalanches so the decision was clear. We were all going down in the valley. It was quiet hard to ski with one meter of fresh snow and dodging trees but the views of Bohinj lake were so great that it was more than worth enough.

After having the last lunch together we said goodbye to each other and we headed towards Ljubljana were we would take the night train back to Venice. We went with Maja and Vesna in the car, and we first stopped at Bleed for an improved sight seen tour because we got kind of lost. Afterwards we went to Ljubljana and visited the old city center with Jure, Maja, Vesna, Mitja, Furi and myself. We tried a soft white wine, ate a fast food kebab, took a shower after one week… and we slept a couple of hours at Jure flat before taking the train at 2am.

Sunday

Friday 6th of March

Friday the same, so I am not going to extend with text. The only difference was that at the end of the day, the weather got better and we could see the surroundings and the avalanches flowing on almost every slope. As it had fallen a bit more than a meter of fresh snow, at the evening Jure and the other guides, told us that we would not be able to leave the mountain the next day because of the high avalanche risk, and that we had to wait at least until Sunday to get down. So the plan for the next day was to bring all our stuff to Dom na Komni and stay there until Sunday.

Saturday

Thursday 5th of March

Thursday was spent with playing around the house, building a fat snowman and playing on the funny track the Norwegians prepared for us. The race consisted in a first 50m obstacles on which participants had to show their abilities. Before continuing, Scandinavian girls tested our Norwegian-Swedish culture with some questions. In the next stop we were supposed to find as quickly as possible a bacon buried after showing the typical dance of the country we had chosen. Finally we crawled through a cave and skied over a big jump to conclude the competition.

We also spend some time cleaning the enormous amount of snow covering the roof of the hut or sliding down a toboggan.

At the evening the cup to the winner team was given and after that, and with the bad weather forecast for Friday, party went on.

That night Tom delighted us with a Catalan joke…do not miss this video!!

Friday

Wednesday 4rth of March

Wednesday morning a 20 cm fresh snow was waiting for us, and it just kept snowing like a crazy so after a short hike under the blizzard, we decided to return to the hut because of the “high?” avalanche danger.

Before we arrived to the hut, Gogi showed us the Norwegian way of testing the stability of the snow cover, while in the afternoon we used bacons to learn about searching for victims buried in an avalanche always under the snow storm. We tested using the avalanche radios (with other words: avalanche beacon, pronounced "avalanche bacon") by burying one of them in the snow and then trying to find where it was, then searching for the buried person or objects with the avalanche probe.

Since it snowed heavily Wednesday all day long it became obvious that we were not going to be able to do any ski hikes during the rest of the camp so we started thinking about alternatives ways to spend the hours in the hut.

Some indoor activities were playing cards, reading or just sleeping…outside the hut there were also possibilities like jumping from the roofs, building tunnels or snowman construction. Thursday

Tuesday 3rd of march

Tuesday we had slightly better weather conditions and our guides, Jure and Rok, decided to hike Bogatin (1977 m). Again, we woke up early, breakfast was ready at 7am and we started skiing at 8.00.

The hike also started with a 30 minute long valley filled with small hills followed by a short hike and a long traverse under the peak. At some moments of the hike, the sun was shinning and I was fascinated for the landscape and the mountains that despite being only 2000m high, were quite spectacular.

After traversing the slopes under Bogatin we quickly climbed up on the ridge where we mounted our skis on the backpack, put crampons and reached the top of Bogatin after a few minutes. On the summint, fog again and we couldn’t see nothing and it was a pity because the guides told us that from the peak, there were great views of Triglav.

The descent was better than expected, first a steep slope on the other face of the peak until the crest were we put crampons before. Once there, we wanted to climb a peak on the south, which was a bit higher than Bogatin, and with an incredible downhill. We tried to convince Jure to do it, but it was a bit risky so we decided to descent. This one was also great, a wide and steep slope covered with hard snow perfect for skiing.

After lunch some of us following Roc, we found another hill to ski down from but that time, snow was too heavy. On our way to the hut a thick fog came again all over Komna and we could not see anything - we also got lost for a few minutes but Roc’s instinct, knowing the terrain by heart, allowed us to come back to the hut safe except some injured pride.

Being the weather forecast bad, we decided to party at night and we met two friends from Slovenia: Lasko and Union. As Tom said, we would have wanted beers, but with Lasko and Union would be enough ;-). Wednesday

Monday 2nd of March

On Monday morning breakfast was ready at 7.00am and we left one hour later on our first trip up on Kal peak, 2001 meters and Srednji Vrh, 1872 meters high. On our way to the first peak, we pass next to a freezing pocked in which a record of almost -50 degrees was recorded last year. Although the weather was not really good and most of the trip went by between clouds and fog, from time to time we were delighted with sunny moments on which we were able to see mountains everywhere.

Very soon after leaving the hut we were faced with one of the biggest differences in the way how Slovenians and Romanians and catalans go ski touring: Slovenians are using ski crampons more frequently than we do, even on short climbs where we would not even think about them. That was because of the extreme precautions the guides were taking during the whole week. Once we had passed the freezing pocked and after taking a short break at Poljanica we mounted our ski crampons again and climbed about 400 meters up to the top of Kal, the skied down almost the same way.

Back at Poljanica we had lunch, and then climbed up on Srednji Vrh where the fog started to go away and let us see some of Komna. The descent was stranger than I could have ever imagined: there were no long continuous slopes ever, but a succession of small hills having the descent side slightly longer than the ascent side. This meant 20 meters of skiing and then 5 meters of climbing back on the next hill, then ski again - I did not count but I bet there were about 10 - 15 hills in the 300 meter descent. The quality of the snow these two first days was a bit crusty in the upper levels becoming to slush snow as we were going down.

In the afternoon, with Tom and Catia, we did our flushing toilet trip to Dom na Komni and after the dinner, we went to bed. Tuesday

Sunday 1rst of March

After the sweet night we spent at the train station, we headed to a coffee bar for a warm chocolate at the train stationbar , while waiting for Jure’s C5. We entertained ourselves by playing chess, till he arrived with someone else, Maja, who first seemed a little bit shy, but afterwards we would discover that after some beers she was everything but shy ;-).

Our next stop was somewhere near a church where we picked up an English guy (Tom), that despite he hadn’t climbed Ben Nevis, he demonstrated being a great ski tour passionated.

After collecting him, we went somewhere not far from Ljubljana, and we met a couple of people more, Mitja and Vesna, although we weren’t much sure who they were at the beginning. One of them was suppose to be the doctor; but Furi said that the doctor was the one who stayed there and wouldn’t come with us at that moment, but would join us on Wednesday. However, I was convinced that the doctor was Vesna, the girl who had just got in the car a while ago. Furi and me were talking about our dilemma saying: “come on, we can’t be that lucky and have such a doctor….” until our patience run out and Furi asked her if she would be our real doctor. The answer was an affirmation from her, and both of us started to feel pain around our bodies!juju…

And so was it, the twenty minute trip between Ljubljana and the meeting point that Maja told us at the beginning, became kind of a long trip of around 1,5 hours, and after passing by the Bled lake, with its wonderful island in the middle, and afterwards the Bohinj lake, we could finally said that we had reached our destination.

Once we arrived there, we realized two things; first of all, that next week would be everything but a YOUTH camp and, that despite the age average of the participants was probably over 30, almost half of them were not men!

We put our luggage (including our skis!!) into the lift and we started walking from the Slap Savica waterfall till Dom na Komni (a 3 hour snow-walk) where we would pick our stuff up and bring it to our hut: Koca pod Bogatinom, where Vinko was waiting for us with a delicious meal as he would carry on doing every single day we spent in the hut.

I must say that most of us were astonished with the snow load we found in Triglav National Park (about 3,5 meters high!!).

Koca pod Bogatinom is a group of huts (or at least what I’ve guessed, because we could only see the roofs) each of them equipped with kitchen, warm living room, some rooms of 4 beds and one final upper floor with around 20 beds, as how it looked like our lovely wooden hut.

After having a great lunch and our bags unpacked, we spent some time outside observing the landscape that was surrounding us and waiting already for the dinner. During the supper, everyone presented himself/herself. Between us there were: 4 Scandinavian people, 3 from Rumania, other 3 from Montenegro, 1 from England, 2 Catalans (us!!) and about 15 from the same Slovenia. After the presentations, it was time to explain the “secret friend” game, which would last until last Friday. That night, as good sportive and healthy people we were, we went to bed quite early. Monday