Climbing: Montenegro: Durmitor- The Most Popular National Park in the Country

Ice and water carved a beautiful, dramatic landscape from a limestone that is the most popular and the most interesting national park in v Montenegro. It is really beautiful place for the lovers of nature. There are white mountains, clean mountain springs, and glacier lakes. There are 18 glacier lakes altogether in the national park . The largest and the easiest accessible is Crno Lake (. You can reach the lake along a 3 kilometer route from Zabljak, a town in the eastern part of the mountains. It is the main entrance to the park, and the only town in the park’s area. Zabljak is not a large town and not even much interesting. It will thus give you space where you can do many things – there are, however, supermarkets (yet expensive), post office, banks, restaurants, or hotels. Everything almost in one line

Durmitor Natinal Park covers an area over 39 000 hectares, there are 48 peaks above 2000 meters absl. The first peka you sea while approaching the Crno Lake is called Medjed ( 2287 m). The highest of them all is Bobotov Kuk (2523 m). The road to the top goes across rough stones in the last couple of hundred meters.

The Durmitor is a mountain range with one of the best designations in Europe. Tourists thus are more prone to explore real high-altitude mountain trails. You can see them there even if the weather is bad. They would be rather helpless in the weather yet even the longest trails don’t take usually more than a day. The admission fee to the park is 2 euros for a day.

In the time of my visit of Montenegro (July), the country was struck by harsh wildfires. Therefore, some roads were closed, which is to said that our travel to the NP Durmitor was rather an unpleasant one. Unfortunately, smoke coming from the fires culminated around the climaxes thus repelling many tourists to hike there. It was really hard to breath there as high altitudes the smoke was denser.

The Tara river cutting in to the mountains in the northern part creates the 2nd deepest canyon in the world (Grand Canyon in Colorado is only 200 meters deeper). The river is also popular among the travel agencies that offer paddling activities. The most beautiful view over the canyon is from the top of Mt Ćurevac (1625 m). The path there is very poorly designated, yet locals will be happy to help you.

The Durmitor and the Tara river are protected by UNESCO.

Text/photo: Martina Brožková