Holiday Weather

My wife and I are good intermediate skiiers. Enjoy red and even black slopes after a fresh snow fall. We came to Borovets in the half term holiday period. The resort is strangely split between two areas and sadly they do not really join up. The lower slopes are accessed by a couple of chair lifts which start off on wide blue slopes ending in a choice of reds a black or a green mountain path.

There are a couple of very wide nursery slopes but these were incredibly crowded for the first 3-4 days. We saw groups of 15+ in classes and it seemed to take ages for the pupils in the classes to take their turn. At worst the beginner drags had 75+ people shuffling in line for their turn. It must have been 40+ minutes to get onto the drags at peek time. Also on the first day we were shocked by the length of queues to get ski gear for some of the groups (it’s unlikely they got their gear before lunch on the first day) so get up early to get your skis.

The second range (much higher and therefore much colder) is reached via the gondolas (25 minute ride) and has an amazing wide green run at the top along with a good blue, a couple of nice wide reds and a black. The drags are tedious though and the 2nd and 3rd drags are horrendously jerky and uncomfortable. The runs down are mainly reds with one nice blue for part of the way. Strangely a couple of the reds run down to nowhere and you have to either walk back or take one of the horse drawn taxis (10 Lev) back to the gondola. There is one chair lift up the side and when the gondola queue is huge (over 30 mins) then it could be advisable to take a taxi to the chair lift which goes up to the middle of the range where you can join the gondolas from the reds, not advisable for beginners.

We arrived after a fresh snow fall and so the first few days enjoyed relatively good conditions. The snow on the higher range stays fresher if conditions turn mild, but it’s icy till mid day if there has been no cloud cover overnight. We enjoyed many of the slopes but were annoyed that on some days not all the slopes were refreshed by piste bashers. With the limited runs it seems incredibly lazy not to have them all in good working order at the start of each day. On the last day they closed the top gondola so many more beginners were packed onto the lower range. Too many beginners trying their first red slopes at the end of their first week to make it a safe experience. There is an opportunity to night ski on floodlit slopes but I’m not sure of the attraction as its just floodlit and at extra cost (no flaming torch processions etc)

If you are a good strong skier you will have skied the entire range in two days or less, but there are plenty of off piste tracks for the more adventurous. All in all a reasonable range but too crowded at times and very annoying that random runs were left undressed and remained heavily rutted when they could have been so much better.

We can thoroughly recommend one of the restaurants on the nursery slope. As you come off the number 3 red slope facing the Rila Hotel it is on your right facing the first of the two chairlifts. Their pizzas are amazing and so is their hot wine. A mug of that mid afternoon will certainly help you fly down the reds and blacks for the rest of the afternoon!

A word of caution
The hole in the wall machines seem to either not work or deliberately not accept English cards of any sort. Is it a conspiracy with the bureau de change and hotels? This forced us to take out cash from our credit card in the hotel with a handling charge of 10%! The cash exchange rate is generous so bring English cash for emergencies.