Montenegro Travel

The mountains of Montenegro are some of the wildest, most spectacular, and least visited in Europe. Nevertheless they are easily accessible, and many areas have well-marked trails. They present an opportunity to travel through outstandingly beautiful and remarkably unspoilt natural scenery, which as yet sees few visitors.

The Mountains of Montenegro is the first comprehensive English-language guide to walking in this beautiful area, written by an author who has visited the country over a number of years and has lived in neighbouring Croatia.

    * The most spectacular mountain areas in Montenegro, with itineraries ranging from single-day hikes to multi-day treks
    * Variants and extensions from the main routes
    * Circular and point-to-point routes
    * Generous background information, including mountain huts and shelters, travel to and within the country, history and language

 

‘Few parts of Europe are so little known as the countries lying between the Danube and the northern frontier of Greece….’
    Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, Dalmatia and Montenegro (London, 1848)
‘Ljepši od Alpa’ – ‘more beautiful than the Alps’. This description of Montenegro’s mountains was given to me by a Croatian climber, in the most congenial setting of a wedding, just over the Slovenian border. And it was these words, together with a postcard of improbably sheer-sided peaks in Durmitor, the country’s best-known mountain area, which first drew me to Montenegro, while living in Zagreb between 1999 and 2001.

Montenegro (or more correctly Crna gora, ‘black mountain’) lies on the southern Adriatic coast, sandwiched between Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Albania; and within its borders are some of the wildest, most spectacular, and least visited mountains in Europe.

Most of the surface area of the country is taken up by the Dinaric Alps – a great string of mountains, extending in furrowed ranges from Slovenia and Croatia in the north, and reaching their greatest altitude in inland Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia. Rising in some places almost sheer from the Adriatic, these mountains throw themselves up in soaring, jagged limestone tops, and have alternately been compared to strings of pearls and the entrance to hell itself. The fierce, rugged character of the Montenegrin highlands is reflected in the name of the mountains running along the northern part of the Albanian border: Prokletije, meaning ‘the accursed mountains’. Yet the landscape is also rich in wildlife and plants, from the diverse birdlife of Skadarso jezero to the primeval forest of Biogradska gora.

The mountains of Montenegro are at their most impressive in the inland areas of Durmitor and Prokletije, where the stunning terrain typically consists of glacial cirques surrounded by fine ridges – often wonderfully exposed – and steep-sided 2000–2500m peaks, some of which require a degree of scrambling to ascend. High pastures, often scattered with stone or wooden shepherd’s huts (known locally as katun), give way to valleys – the lower slopes of which are cloaked in dense pine and beech forest, and picturesque lakes. Between these mountain areas, the landscape is slashed by deep canyons – one of which, the Tara, is the second deepest in the world.

 

Like the mountains of neighbouring Croatia, Slovenia and other countries from the former Yugoslavia, the mountains of Montenegro are criss-crossed by well-established, clearly marked trails. There are some mountain huts and shelters, although considerably fewer than in Croatia or Slovenia – most of the walks in this guide require carrying a tent – and detailed maps are available for some of the most popular hiking areas.

Montenegro is rapidly gaining popularity as a destination with travellers from Western Europe – especially with the current tourist boom in neighbouring Croatia. However, with the exception of a few busy spots on the coast, much of the country – and in particular its mountains – remains little visited.

The routes in this guidebook range from easy day walks to extended and relatively demanding mountain treks, and include both circular as well as point-to-point itineraries. It is possible to link a number of the routes to form even longer treks – following the route across Biogradska gora, Komovi, Maglić and Kučka krajina (Walks 9–11, see Appendix A), for example, would amount to an excursion lasting about eight days. Almost all of the routes are easily accessible by local public transport. Find out more about  The Mountains of Montenegro at Cicerone.co.uk 

( The Mountains of Montenegro text, map and photos belong to Rudolph Abraham and Cicerone Press, that also publishes other guidebooks for long distance walks and treks, day walks, family walks, scrambling, climbing, ice climbing and mountaineering, cycling guides, hill and mountain skills and outdoor photography.)