How to get there:
First, drive to location N42.55442, E18.52031. The road is paved
all the way, but fairly narrow with sharp curves the last several kilometer.
At this location, a dirt road continues. This road is nice and smooth quite
some distance, after crossing some sort of short bridge, the road gets somewhat
rougher. Still quite OK, but a little bit of ground clearance is nice. Any sensible
SUV car should do ok. The road is nicely built by hand, many nice supporting stone
walls. Continue to the main col, there is an abandoned building there. The dirt road drive
will take approximately 30 minutes. This is location
N42.55820, E18.55220, elevation 1585 meter. Park here. Route description:
The summit is clearly visible from the trailhead.
There is a signed and marked trail to the summit, YDS class 1. The distance is 2 kilometer
and the net elevation gain only 310 meter.
The trail ascends the first part of the ridge,
the summit is already closer,
then descends a bit left and generally stays on
the left side of the main ridge.
Here is a quick summary of peaks climbed on this trip to Balkan.
A track of the short hike is
posted on Peakbagger.
Comments:
I left our hotel in Dubrovnik sometime after 0730.
The border crossing was slow, but fortunately, only about 5 cars ahead of me.
I was uncertain about the quality of the mountain road, thus very happy when I found
a quite good road that easily took me to the main col.
I started hiking around 1030 and arrived at the summit
in 50 minutes. I was quite surprised since
I had read a trip report saying that one needed "to scramble" up the ridge to this summit.
The truth was following a nice and very easy (YDS) class 1 trail.
I took some pictures, then walked
leisurely back to my car in 40 minutes.
The drive back to Croatia was a lot worse than expected. I waited a full 1:45 (almost 2 hours!)
to cross the border. They had two gates/lanes open, but could have had four. As it was, a long line of
cars with engines running (and polluting), just because Croatia does not take the responsibility for
a reasonable into Schengen border crossing.
