Veliki Vitao - here be dragons

Having done Maglic I wanted to climb to the highest point on the range of mountains it is part of. This range, the Bioč, lies mainly in Montenegro and is clearly not often frequented - certainly not by English speaking people. I could very little online about the range or its highpoint, Velki Vitao, other than it was possible to get there from Stabna.

Stabna

Friendly people live here

Look for this sign when driving from Pluznice

Almost by chance, I ended up at the end of a narrow road with no turning point. Whilst I was struggling to reverse back downhill a man came out of the final house to help. He insisted that I came into his house and his wife insisted that I have some breakfast - consisting of caz (herbal tea) and bread with home-made kajmak (sour cream).I turned down the offer of a shot of slivovice which the man and his friend were drinking quite heavily for their breakfast. Their daughter was staying for a few days and she spoke excellent English. There was a big debate as to how I could get up the hill.
As it turned out the start of a path was opposite the house - however there is no signpost or markings. Indeed, there does not appear to be any marked trails anywhere on the range other than at the Trnovacko jezero or Maglic end.

Meadow

The path is very well defined through the woods and along a ridge overlooking the Stabanska river until it reaches a large alp or meadow. There were several ruined summer houses up there - only one seemed to be occupied by an old shepherd, with one tooth, who wanted to shake my hand. From thereon there were occasional animal or shepherd tracks that would show promise for a while and then fade.







The Bioč is a complex and large range. In a way, thankfully, I made a bit of a mistake and headed for the wrong summit. I say thankfully because if I had headed directly to the correct one I would probably not found the way over the intervening ridge. For anyone who is interested I can provide them with the GPS track showing the route I took - however, for both my ascent and descent routes I would suggest that they use the track as a rough guide rather than a definite plan to follow.
As it happens, the wrong summit was on the western end of the aforementioned intervening ridge and it was not toodifficult to drop down to a col and up to the true summit. If I had attempted to cross the ridge at any other point I would have ended up looking down a very steep and extended drop and would have given up. From the summit it was possible to see a pass at the eastern end that looked relatively easy. Even when I reached this pass the route back to the meadow was not as straighforward as I had naively imagined.

That gap is not a way through - view from north side

Anyone who wants to try for the summit in a roughly similar way to my descent route I list the crucial co-ordinates below. How you get between them is up to you. Mind you, I suspect any route will end up as convoluted and lengthy as mine because of the frequent need to go round the ubiquitous sinkholes, terraces and escarpments to be found in Karst limestone areas.
Start point (park about 80m before here): N43.17331 E18.75615.
End of clear path to meadow: N43.18214 E18.74882
Pass over intervening ridge: N43.20610 E18.76688 (From here, on a clear day you can see the summit)
Veliki Vitao summit: N43.22566 E18.75734

Whatever you do not head for the obvious steep sided notch in the intervening ridge instead of the pass I have indicated. There is no descent route on the other side. Other than that the walking is not too difficult

There is a visitor book on the summit - and the number of entries are rather few. However it is worth a visit the views are terrific

Believe in Maglic



Would you just drive in there?

I did not want to drive the long way round to the Bosnian side, especially without a Green card and the poor road up to the usual trailhead. So I wanted to see if it was possible to tackle Maglic, Bosnia i Hercegovina highest point (2386m P311) from over the border in Montenegro. I gave myself an afternoon to explore as I could not find any information online, certainly not in English. The village of Mratinje seemed the best option. Finding the village was the first task. The road to it has quite an uninviting start through a tunnel near a large hydro-electric dam at N43.27403 E18.84241.

Trailhead sign near Mratinje

Just before the village sign there is a right turn (N43.25907 E18.82458) into a rough, but drivable, back road into Bosnia. I spent a couple of hours walking up it to a pass on the first ridge. However the trailhead for Maglic is through the village at N43.26974 E18.78515 where there is a small parking space and a sign. Furthermore, there is a clearly marked trail 811 for the Trnovacko jezero (lake) and Maglic.

The road soon ends at a small hamlet. Then there is a steep path through a meadow into the trees. The path continues across a small scree slope and then to the foot of a much larger and flowery scree slope which is relatively easy to ascend at one side. When I got to the top there was a thunderstorm. Luckily I found a small bivvy sized cave where I dozed off until the storm passed by.

From there the landscape was one of karst limestone with the usual need to go round sinkholes of various sizes, past a voda (water) spring until reaching a ridge where the Trnovacko jezero path turned left and the path for Maglic turned right. From the ridge there were good views down into the next valley and into Bosnia.









The path went along the ridge and over various false summits until finally there was a view of the fine looking final summit which promised a brief scramble after crossing the international border marked by a EU development sign (despite neither country being a member - I bet this would have been an irritation for the Nigel Farage types). The top N43.28109 E18.73311 is marked with a metal Yugoslavian flag and a plaque in honour of Tito.

White Maglic

Yugoslavian flag

Tito plaque

Bosnia

 

I returned by the same route as I ascended. As I reached the trees there was another and lengthy thunder storm and I ended up very wet from torrential rain.








Dubrovnik and Podgorica

City break time. On the way down, I made brief visit to Zagreb, Croatia's capital and had a quick look at the sights. Enjoyed a visit to the gallery of Naive Art, in particular.

Patrick whizzing around the city walls. 

In the second week of July 2014 I met up with my pal, Patrick, and we spent several days in Dubrovnik and a couple of days in Podgorica, Montenegro's capital. 

My son, Luke, was on his way to a music festival on one of the Croatian islands, so we also spent 24 hours with him in Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik being a resort was crowded, however enjoyed looking around the Old Town and the city walls. 

Patrick at rest

And then taking the cable car to the fortress on top of Srd and seeing the exhibition there of the photos showing the destruction and damage Dubrovnik received during the seige in 1991.

In terms of bagging that week it was limited to the highest point, Polacica (214m P214) on the island of Lopud.

Polacica summit 

Although only a short climb it turned out to be remarkably difficult trying to clamber over sharp karst limestone through close-planted trees and plentiful trailing plants covered in thorns. By time I got  back to the trail to the nearby fortress my arms were lacerated and bleeding and I washed off the blood with a sea swim.

Lopud

Montenegro is noticeably less affluent than Croatia. Crossing the border was not as difficult as I had anticipated as getting a Green card was quite simple. I hope it is as easy at forthcoming borders to other countries outwith the EU and no Schengen agreement. There seemed to be quite a large length of road in 'no-mans-land'.

Kotor bay 

Podgorica turned out be rather less attractive and uncharacteristically wet, with a lot of continuous heavy rain. If I say that possibly the most interesting experience was seeing a car back into the side of another one the reader may get the picture. The town used to be called Titograd and there is much evidence of the utilitarian style (or lack of style) of the Communist era.

Miljanov 's current view of Titograd

Marko Miljanov

Medun in the foothills of  the Kuci tribal area was more interesting. We were shown around the birthplace and burial place of  Marko Miljanov, national hero/ poet, who lead battles against the Turks in the late 19th century. 

Republika Hrvatska

How that gets to be pronounced as Croatia beats me. Maybe not the most precipitous range of hills but the Dinaric alps are fine to look at and ascend. I have had a go at a handful recently.

Croatia's highest point is Dinara (1831m P782) although it is not its most prominent one (that comes later). There is a small road towards the trailhead that leaves the village of Kijevo on the D1 road  at N43.96677 E16.36487.

Like other people I started from the unused bus-stop near Glavas hamlet N44.00556 E16.42150 - once upon a time there was a sketch map of the mountain on the side of the shelter, however, this is no longer legible.
The route is waymarked, though, all the way. If you are cheeky enough you could probably drive up through the hamlet to the end of the track by a blue building at 44.01105 E1641936.

From that point onwards the narrow path passes a ruined fortress and negotiates through rocky karst limestone and often through dense vegetation.

At one point I stood on a venomous horned viper - as it hissed and raised its head to seek revenge I whisked it away into the undergrowth with my walking pole. There are a couple of water/voda points and I found a trickle of water coming out of a pipe at N44.02806 E16.40670. I took a risk by drinking some and have lived to tell the tale.
Higher up the vegetation becomes more subdued and the limestone rougher. A number of large sinkholes have to be circumvented before eventually reaching the final pull up to the badly damaged trigpoint on the summit at N44.06251 E16.38288. The effort is well worth it with extensive views into nearby Bosnia i Hercegovina and further away islands in the Adriatic.

I descended more or less by the same route keeping a watchful eye out for the viper. However, all I met was the two very friendly dogs from the hamlet and they accompanied me back to the motorhome. These two dogs have been mentioned in other reported ascents of Dinara.

Dinara

Svilaja is probably the least visited of the three Croatian Majors of this trip. It has the fanciest trigpoint with the mostest information - no mention of the prominence, though. I suspect there are easier routes of ascent than the one I took. The true summit is several metres to the northwest west of the trigpoint at N43.79070 E16.48474.

Svilaja

I left the tarmac road at N43.75106 E16.52328 and drove up a rough track as far as the closed Dom na Orlovim at N43.76891 E16.52381. Shortly further up the track two routes were indicated to the summit. I took the one that left the track and headed up into the trees and karst rocks.

It was obviously not a commonly used path, but I persevered. The route perversely ended up being a switchback ride as it went through the middle of a series of heavily vegetated and deep sinkholes.
The disadvantage of all the vegetation was that it made the going a bit tiresome at times. The advantage was that I had the pick of the plentiful wild strawberries to myself.
Possibly in days gone by these sinkholes could have been cultivated but there was little evidence of that now. Finally the path broke out on the easier upper slopes and then on to the broad ridge, pocked by large sinkholes.

For the return journey I went back to a junction of paths at N43.78405 E16.49425, turned left and descended by a steeper but much more straightforward path through the woods on the northern (allegedly still land-mined) face of the mountain to meet the gravel road at N43.78558 E16.50286 where there was space to park at least one vehicle. There followed a trudge back in the hot sun  and no strawberries round the mountain to the start.

Sv Jure mast

Sveti Jure

Sveti Jure is Croatia's most prominent mountain - 1762m P1164. I thought I would not be able to get to the summit (N43.34204 E17.05384) because of fencing around the comms mast and no excuse about climbing over the high gate as the warning sign said no entry in five languages. However, someone had kindly dug a tunnel under the fence round the back. To tell the truth - the rest is a drive-up, where any exhaustion comes from frequent turns of the steering wheel at the many sharp turns in the road for 21 kilometres.