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The famous Plovdiv lawyer and former NMSS MP Vladimir Donchev almost lost his life in the mountains. Donchev published a dramatic story about his struggle with the natural disaster in the Rhodopes and sent several important warnings to all mountaineers:
“I haven’t been on Facebook in a long time and I’m used to sharing, but the extreme story I lightly got involved in on Saturday night deserves to be shared, at least to protect others from my mistakes high in the mountains that could have cost expensive.
From my villa at the foot of the Rhodopes, I decided on Saturday afternoon to take a short drive to the resort of Byala Cherkva (1650 m) to try out my hiking gear and new snowshoes. The next day my partner and I planned to make a short walk to the area of the old unit, where we have a small unpretentious hunting lodge with two rooms. I parked in the parking lot under the monastery “St. Peter and Paul” and left with my backpack on the way to “Bash Mandra” and the department. It was 5:10 pm and my intention was to walk one or two kilometers with my backpack and, if there was soft snow, to try the snowshoes.
The forest road was paved with jewelers’ jeeps and trucks, and it was easy and fast, even though it was very cold. Unnoticed, I reached the last fork for “Bash Mandra” in about 45 minutes and decided to continue to the hut, although it was getting dark. There were about two or three kilometers left, true with some ascent, but the road was paved and easy and I thought it would continue until the turnoff for the village of Sitovo and from there I will continue until the end with the new snowshoes. In addition, a few days ago my partner and I had had a good time and we had trampled a snowshoe to the unit.
So I continued in the dark, shining with the headband, which is built into the high-tech hat, a gift from my daughter. I was calm that I would arrive quickly and call on my mobile in Plovdiv not to worry. On the forest road the signal is lost, but up on the ridge at the hut there is always coverage. The mobile was turned off so as not to waste the battery while searching for a network. My backpack was equipped with everything I needed, even for being outdoors (at least I thought so), I was well dressed, I was carrying my legal pistol, because last winter a pack of seven wolves was hovering near the unit.
In general, I thought it would be an easy quarter-hour hike in the dark but beautiful forest. This was my first mistake – I went to the mountains without calling and without anyone knowing where I was going. However, the transition proved to be a difficult ordeal and lasted more than two and a half hours with many hardships. Shortly before the turnoff for Sitovo it rained heavily and turned into a blizzard. Getting out of the beaten track on the road, I continued to the hut in the blizzard with the intention of following the path made by my partner and me a few days ago.
Here I made my second mistake – I did not put on the snowshoes while I was on a vow. It was very difficult to put the snowshoes in this blizzard and strong wind and I continued on the path that was visible, thinking that I would be able to move on the trampled without sinking. Yes, but when I came out of the woods, the blizzard and the new snow completely eliminated the path. I could barely follow the road, clinging to the faint ditch by the road.
For several hundred meters, sinking in the deep snow, I was terribly exhausted, the freezing wind blocked my thinking and I did not realize that I was fighting the snow without snowshoes, which is crazy, but I continued mechanically and stubbornly, knowing that the unit was nearby. There the road, at a large meadow, called by the loggers “Rampata”, branches into three and you have to turn left towards the unit.
Yes, but the leader worked weakly so as not to wear out, and the visibility was 20 cm because of the blizzard. The curves of the ditch were no longer visible, and it was only inwardly that I decided when to turn left. I knew from a few days ago that just before the first dilapidated watchtower on the road in front of the unit, there were two paired pines that had recently fallen from the heavy snow and blocked it. I was hoping for a guide.
I wandered in the blizzard of the flickering headlight, expecting to see a fallen tree. When I saw a fallen pine tree less than a meter in front of me, I was glad to be on the right track, but as I got closer, I was impressed that there was only one. The suspicion has already crept in here that I have lost my way. I decided to go around him and see if there was another tree behind him, as he could be seen less than a meter away.
On my second step to the right, I fell to my chest in deep depression. My sticks slammed into the handles in the snow. The backpack wouldn’t let me move. My eyes were full of snow. I realized in an instant that I had to act fast if I wanted to get alive. I dug around a bit, took off my backpack and widened the pit. I formed something like a seat in the snow and sat low in the covenant pit of the blizzard. This helped me come to my senses and assess the situation.
I had jammed it 350 meters from the hut on my account. I was exhausted from fighting the deep snow. I was sitting on the cold snow, and despite my thermal underwear and ski wedge, my body was rapidly cooling from contact with the snow. I dug up more snow and sat on my backpack to isolate the snow from my body and take out my cell phone. Unfortunately, I put it in an outer pocket with a zipper on the wedge and it didn’t turn on. He was frozen. I put it under the thermal blouse next to my stomach to keep warm, not knowing when and if it would warm up and turn on.
Time was running out, and I was getting even colder. The option of staying in the blizzard was tempting because I was very exhausted, I had probably strayed from the road and it was not known if I would continue if I would make it at all. I had equipment in my backpack that could help me spend the night outside – an aluminum thermal blanket, a sleeping bag, a gas mini-primus, and a kettle for heating water. I also had some food and an ax, but it was impossible to light a fire in this whirlwind. I had to make a quick decision. Waiting for a mobile phone to warm up and work in order to call my partner from Plovdiv for help was uncertain as an opportunity. If I could get in touch, he would arrive in the area in three and a half, four hours at the earliest, not sure if he would find me in this blizzard.
As I left the parking lot below the convent, the thermometer in the car read minus 11 degrees. It was much colder now because of the icy wind. I decided with all my might to make one last attempt to find out where the road was, coming out of my hiding place and, if I could not, return to the pit in the gorge and spend the night there. I drank some iced tea from the decathlon thermos, which was at least sweet. With great effort I put the snowshoes on with stiff fingers and crawled out of the pit. I also dragged my backpack, because if I lost my way to the blizzard pit, I would freeze without any cold equipment.
Fortunately, the wind hadn’t completely erased my tracks, and I walked back slowly to where I had turned left. I went to the empty place, where I did not see any pines and where I hoped to be the fork in the road of three – to Sitovo, Boykovo and the unit. There is a meadow, called by the loggers “Rampata”, where they gather the cut logs.
I walked without seeing the blizzard and I don’t know what I was really hoping for. At one point I bumped into something and realized that these were the trunks of felled and pruned pines. I had a landmark. I could already find my way to the unit on it. I barely made my way, but it was unclear if it was the right direction. I felt myself dragging the heavy backpack across the snow, and it held me back as it sank into the soft snow.
The first time I tried to put my backpack on my back, the wind blew me into the soft snow. Have you tried to get up in deep, fluffy new snow with a heavy backpack on your back and snowshoes on your feet in a shaving icy wind? The picture is humiliating. Crookedly, I succeeded on the third attempt and fastened the backpack, half-bent to the wind.
I walked forward blindly, hoping that this time I had hit the direction, and after a hundred or two hundred steps I bumped into the two fallen paired pines. I was definitely saved! Almost! I didn’t have a key to the hut, which was no more than 300 meters away. I walked slowly to the small building and looked for the key hidden nearby. I will not explain how much I trembled if I would find him and if I would not drop him in the deep snow from my numb hands a few meters to the door.
The thermometer on the tree showed minus 12 on the outside and minus 8 on the inside. However, it was already great for me. Only after I lit the stove, melted snow for tea, warmed my mobile and called Plovdiv and wrote to my son, drank a glass of rum and a teapot, I noticed that it warmed for two hours to two degrees above zero. . However, I was warm, I was alive, I felt happy!
My story is a bit like Jack London, but every word in it is true. Of course, I will no longer make such childish mistakes and I will always warn where I am going in the mountains, I will think carefully about the route and what equipment I need and when to put it, I will keep my mobile and tea warm, I will carry a strong flashlight or headlamp at night time.
I hope my story will help those of my friends who, like me, do not have much experience, but have a great desire to communicate with the mountain! ”
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