Raysko Praskalo

Worth a detour

At 124.5 metres this is the highest permanent waterfall in the country and probably on the peninsula, dropping off the wall below Botev into the Kalofer cirque. Its Bulgarian name means sprinkler, which is honest: this is a long thin ribbon that breaks into spray on the way down, not a torrent. Getting there is most of a day, so build it into the Botev walk rather than treating it as a stop.

Story

Background

The water comes off the snowfields on the Botev massif, which is why the flow behaves the way it does. Spring melt gives it the most volume, and unlike most Bulgarian waterfalls it keeps running through the summer because the snow patches up there survive well into the warm months. By late autumn it is thin, and in hard winter it freezes into a column.

It falls into the head of the Kalofer cirque, one of the abrupt southern walls of the central Balkan range where the mountain drops well over a thousand metres towards the Rose Valley in a few kilometres. The standard approach starts at Panitsite on the road north of Kalofer, follows the valley up to the Rai hut at about 1,435 metres — three to four hours, more with a pack — and the falls are twenty minutes further on. Staying the night at Rai is the sensible version; you get the waterfall and the cirque in early light, and you are already placed for Botev the next morning if you want it.

Above the falls the trail continues as the Tarzan path, steep and cabled, up onto the summit plateau. Plenty of people go as far as the water and turn round, which is a perfectly good day. The whole area is inside Central Balkan National Park, so stay on the marked route.