So I spent Easter hanging out in Valbona Valley/Albania with a couple of good friends. The TGR pros were discovering the Balkans during that time but neglected to visit this spot because the heli on offer wasn't rad enough or something. Everyone was like "Haha you dumb, TGR."
C/P from blog cause clicking sucks, pictures under the big block of text.
---------------------
When you spend 10 hours ski touring in rain, then graupel, then heavy snowfall and finally light snowfall with strong wind, looking for a pass you don't find because you are in a storm cloud, with a heavy backpack (you were trying to do a three day traverse) you know one thing: you are alive. You know this because you are soaked and when you stand still for more than two minutes you start shivering. On the other hand you are uncomfortably soggy and warm while moving, sweat mingling with melted snow in the saturated fabric of your expensive merino base layer, designed for precisely this kind of aliveness.
From a skiing perspective, if we are honest, the mountains here are far from ideal. Dramatic towers and jutting buttresses of crumbling limestone frame dream lines above massive cliffs and dense forrest parted only by funneling slide paths of doom. Initially everything looks inaccessible. With time options emerge and ways are found but mostly the first impression remains valid. This is not an easy range. Maps are not very trustworthy, not that it would help much.
The jumbled mess of the Albanian Alps was birthed from crashing tectonic plates. This is true of mountains in general but perhaps things crashed particularly hard here. Storms roll in fueled by the warmth and moisture of the Mediterranean sea. Air is ripped violently upwards, frontal precipitation and orographic lift combine to drench us. Graupel forms when water particles are lifted and dropped again, freezing and melting and freezing and falling. We shake pellets of graupel out of creases in jackets and flinch at thunder claps in the snowstorm. Snowflakes need time and a delicate balance of temperature and vapour pressure, spindly crystal arms growing, drifting in clouds. Later the temperature drops and they float out of a black night sky. Bjeshkët e Namuna, the Cursed Mountains, are the wettest region of Europe.
This was my second visit to Valbona Valley. The first time it snowed for a week and we saw nothing but trees. On this trip the weather was mostly pretty reasonable and I feel like I now understand the lay of the land well enough that a third trip could be much easier. The list of projects grows with each glimpse of a new valley behind a new ridge line, as it always does.
Driving north from Tirana Yago said how bizarre it was to be road tripping here in this oddly forgotten corner of Europe with a German girl that dreams of Patagonian glaciers and an Austrian who is, at heart, an Andalucian Flamenco dancer. We listened to his collection of Chacareras as rainy hills flew by, driving trance interrupted only by occasional potholes and confusion at rare intersections.
As we scrambled through brush and around waterfalls he pointed out the similarities to the Patagonian brush and waterfalls we love so much. Que saudade por la Patagonia! It takes a special kind of person to appreciate the hilarity of type two fun, not only after the experience but during. Random giggling fits certainly help morale when you are trying to determine which way is up in a whiteout. I believe we did well.
We tried to learn a few words of Albanian and Adenis kindly obliged us. I can say bor (snow), diel (sun) and falaminderit (thank you).
Long day. Clarisse's foto.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4FHz6hMhgk...0/DSC_0281.JPG
Language is so inadequate sometimes, and not only when you are trying to have deep philosophical discussions in Spanish (which you don't really speak). In Albania we had Portugese Saudade, a relative (not a twin) of Japanese mono no aware and German Wehmut. All three of us are hopeless romantics of the slightly melancholic kind, even though we would rather not admit it.
When I came home Kyle was hanging out at our place. He has another untranslatable word tatooed on his wrist: Sisu a finnish expression "similar to equanimity, with the addition of a grim quality of stress management". I suppose I understand why he likes it but I would much rather have my mountains full of serendipity, serenity, and yes, I'll take saudade too.
My strange mountain friends, how can we be so alike, yet so different?
Moving pictures with confused soundtrack because that's how it was.
https://vimeo.com/125056114
Town of Bayram Curri. Not without its charms.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7707/...095e26db_o.jpg
Cars are either shiny black mercedes or rotting beaters.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8725/...6f1ea94c_o.jpg
Kukaj, hamlet above the main valley.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7715/...df4ef6c5_o.jpg
Yago points out all the things you could see if there was no cloud.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7703/...bed5af1f_o.jpg
Mordor.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8779/...ab4960a9_o.jpg
Yago invents new form of drytooling that does not require ice axes.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7632/...6c8b5c0a_o.jpg
Freeskialpineering 101 with Clarisse.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8724/...62b54ece_o.jpg
Weather turned to shit just in time for our descent.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7609/...4090a2f2_o.jpg
Skiing in Mordor.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7658/...4aeb35a5_o.jpg
Dawning blue.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8819/...407fcc78_o.jpg
Nothing to see here.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8771/...ff42c4e1_o.jpg
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8699/...49776f5e_o.jpg
View of where we were the day before.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7647/...444984a0_o.jpg
Reaching Valbona pass. Town of Tethi in the bg. Unline Valbona, the road there is not functional in winter and people are effectively cut of a few months.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8801/...eb58b2f4_o.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7597/...11f0eae6_o.jpg
Looking out Valbona Valley
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8783/...24079740_o.jpg
Gorgeous morning, light drizzle
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7635/...c7d0d28e_o.jpg
The carvings in the trees are names and dates left by bored soldiers doing border patrols during the final years of the Hoxha period.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7696/...0dbd2a9e_o.jpg
Lovely weather.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8824/...f9ff3d44_o.jpg
Another blue morning.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8765/...f0ef289b_o.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7651/...a3aa1850_o.jpg
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8751/...5c578776_o.jpg
Out of the woods.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8743/...eace2704_o.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7628/...99c293ae_o.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7698/...c0c3cae2_o.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7709/...18aa82df_o.jpg
Looking over into Montenegro
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8805/...6fa81d38_o.jpg
Skiing over into Montenegro
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7623/...a9672a2b_o.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7704/1...f17659dc_o.jpg
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8805/...0c414f7c_o.jpg
Back to the Albanian side.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8784/...2270b884_o.jpg
On the border.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8739/...959d6d2e_o.jpg
