Chepelare: private ski lessons & instructors

Chepelare is a small town in the Rhodopes, on the road from Plovdiv to Pamporovo, with a winter-sports pedigree out of proportion to its size: it is the home town of Ekaterina Dafovska, the 1998 Olympic biathlon champion, and it has a factory that makes skis and snowboards.

Its ski area is Mechi Chal. A fast four-seat chairlift with a mid-station climbs from the edge of town, at about 1,150 m, to the 1,873 m summit in about nine minutes, and the runs come back down through the forest with about 700 m of vertical, much more than in Pamporovo. The main Mechi Chal piste is a little over 3 km long and covered by snowmaking, and a gentler run of 5 to 6 km winds down the side; in all, sources give between about 14 and 20 km of pistes.

Since 2016 Mechi Chal has been run together with Pamporovo, with one lift pass for both and a ski bus between them, and Pamporovo's operator is preparing plans for snowmaking across the whole of Mechi Chal.