📷 Figures in the Clouds

The Valley of Ghosts on the western slope of Southern Demerdzhi Mountain is famous for two things. The first is a group of rocks of different bizarre shapes, formed as a result of weathering of the stone. With their shapes, these rocks resemble figures of people, animals and other various objects, while possessing impressive dimensions - from several meters to 25 meters in height. The scale of the rocks in the photo below can be imagined if you look at the path at its foot — this is a rather wide trail along which we came here.

And the second is fogs and low clouds that now and then appear on the slopes of the mountain. The maximum height of Southern Demerdzhi is 1239 meters above sea level, and since the Valley of Ghosts is located below, both of these phenomena often visit the Valley of Ghosts. Cloths of clouds, drawn by a fast wind, sweep like streams of smoke along the slope, changing the picture before our eyes every second, now opening one section of the "stone forest", now hiding it from sight under a dense curtain.

Also, having climbed to the top of the mountain, if you are lucky, you can see a curious phenomenon there — the Brocken specter, but in this matter I was not lucky that day. We arrived for half a day to walk in the mountains and take a look at the Valley of Ghosts. You can climb to the top of the mountain and this is a wonderful trek for the whole day (there are many convenient and accessible paths for hiking), but we preferred a rather relaxed walk into the mountains with a contemplative purpose. And we didn’t regret spending at least an hour and a half in the Valley of Ghosts, watching the stone figures and the clouds, from time to time enveloping them. The ascent itself from the village of Luchistoye took no more than an hour,with stops to take pictures.