Peaks of the Balkans – Backpacking through Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo

When I moved to Europe in 2018 I ended up with some unexpected extra time on my hands before starting my job in Belgium. I eventually spent that time hiking around Romania, but not before reading about a trail called the Peaks of the Balkans. A ~190km loop trail through the rural mountains at the intersection of Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo, it was one of the newer and more remote backpacking trails through Europe and it immediately captured my attention. For the next five years it would live in the back of my mind and I would revisit the idea each summer before delaying it to the next year for an ever shifting list of reasons (excuses). Finally, last year, I roped my cousin Dave into hiking it with me and he gave me the final push that I needed to sit down and plan it all out for real this time.

This is a long post, with more pictures than anyone needs, so probably you’ll want to read it in chunks or just skim for interesting details :).

The standard Peaks of the Balkans (PoB) trail sits within an extensive network of mountains and trails that offers as much variation and adventure as you can dream of. I opted to plan out a modified version of the loop that excised the sections in Kosovo in favor of several detours into some of the (even more) remote areas of Albania and Montenegro. We hiked for 12 days, around 150 km, setting foot in all three countries and up to 2656m elevation.

[August 24 – September 5, 2023]

Day 0 [Travel]
I flew from Belgium to Tirana, Albania where I met up with Dave. He had just come from two weeks in Romania with his fiance and her family, then a week traveling through Bulgaria and Greece before meeting me in Albania. We met at the bus station in Tirana and caught the next bus to Shkoder, one of the larger cities in the northern part of the country and a common staging point for trips into the mountains there. We spent the night in Shkoder at a fun hostel, and early the next morning caught a shuttle ride a couple hours into the mountains to the small village of Theth, where we would begin our hike.

Day 1 [Theth, AL -> Valbona, AL] (19.3km | 1,299m)

The shuttle got us to Theth around 9am under clear blue skies and hot weather. We spent a few minutes sorting final bits of gear and then spent our loose change on a couple sodas at the small shop nearby to cut down on extra weight ;). We started out of Theth and followed a dirt road for several km, first winding past a bit of farmland and then starting to snake up a steep hillside. Eventually we left the road for a dirt path that kept going up and up towards Valbona Pass, just below the peak of Maja Valbona. Along the way we hiked through beautiful forest, picked up a stray dog for a km or so (the first of many to share our path the next two weeks), and stopped in at a small cafe setup on the side of a hillside to provide cold refreshments to hikers on their way to the pass.

All along the entire PoB route many locals have set up small cafes and food stands catering to the hikers that come past during peak season, and we would pass and enjoy many such stops along our way. The cafes took on all shapes and forms, from the huts that shepherd families were themselves living out of, to light plywood and tarpaulin constructed shacks, to full timber beam constructed small cabins.

After reaching the pass we continued down into the Valbona Valley, stopping for a late lunch in the shade of a huge boulder. On reaching the valley floor we still had 5-6 km of flat gravel walking left to get us into the town of Valbona itself, which did grate on our joints just a bit after the strenuous hike up and over the pass behind us.

Eventually we reached Valbona, and after a short mix-up and subsequent car ride from a friendly local we managed to get ourselves to the correct guesthouse where we were staying that night. We showered, had a tasty dinner at their restaurant, and even did a few items of laundry – luxury that would not be regularly repeated for most of the following nights.

Day 2 [Valbona, AL -> Cerem, AL] (11.1km | 1,291m)

We had a nice breakfast at the guesthouse and purchased a packed lunch to go consisting of bread, tomato, cucumber, boiled egg, and some cheese. Almost all of the guesthouses we stayed at had the option to be sent along with a packed lunch, and almost all of them gave the same staple ingredients. Not exactly ultra-light, but it made for a nice morning snack and helped supplement the food stores we were carrying on our backs.

After breakfast one of the guesthouse workers drove us a few km down the street to the start of our route for the day. The “official” stage for Valbona -> Cerem is not particularly impressive, following the paved road out of Valbona and keeping along the relatively flat valley all the way to Cerem. We instead chose the alternate route that would take us over Prosslopit Pass and then back down into the valley where the seasonal village of Cerem is situated.

The day passed in a way that became typical for the rest of our trip: we would begin with a hot and sweaty climb up from the valley floor, through beautiful forests eventually thinning out into alpine pasture. After reaching our highpoint for the day (usually a pass or small peak) we would descend on the far side towards the next valley where our next night’s stay awaited us.

For this second day on the trail we were still feeling strong after a good night’s rest, despite the solid workout we had put in the day before. The sun was hot and our backs sweaty as we approached Prosslopit Pass, and we had lunch sheltered beneath the meager shade of a small boulder with the noonday sun riding high overhead. When we crossed the pass we could look up and see a small chain of people ascending and descending Zla Kolata, one of the highest peaks in this region at 2535m. As stunning as the views must have been, with the heavy packs on our backs and the long ascent to the pass just behind us, neither us gave much consideration to the 3km / 450m detour for the peak, and instead we continued on our way, thankful to be past the day’s highpoint.

We continued along a bit of a high and rolling plateau on the far side of the pass for a bit before dropping down towards Cerem. At one point we passed a very cool cave formation, with an entrance leading about 2-3m into the rock before dropping down into a deep hole of unknown depth, and with a very cold and refreshing wind blasting up out of it.

On the way down to Cerem we stopped by a small cafe / shepherd family hut to grab a few beers for the night. They had a herd of sheep, some chickens, and a few young cows who were cavorting around and enjoying themselves to our amusement.

Though there are guesthouses in Cerem, we decided to camp that night, starting a pattern of switching between guesthouse / camping every other night that we would follow for most of our trip. We poked around between a few shepherd settlements outside of town and eventually found a nice secluded spot at the edge of a large field overlooking the village for us to set up camp for the night.

Day 3 [Cerem, AL -> Doberdol, AL] (17.4km | 1,329m)

The next morning dawned on another beautiful day, but a day that would be one of the more physically challenging days during our trip. We were starting to feel the effect of the previous two days’ effort, and despite eating well our packs were not feeling much lighter. As an added bonus, Dave woke up to find out that the welts he had dismissed as mosquito bites the previous day were not healing yet but instead getting worse, and we eventually came to the conclusion that he had the misfortune of suffering a bedbug attack during our first night at the guesthouse. Why they went for him and not me, sleeping in a bed just two meters away, we had no idea, but unfortunately those welts took another couple itchy days to heal completely. And of course put a holy fear and paranoia into us that any guesthouse we stayed at could be a repeat that gets both of us. (Though luckily we would remain unscathed after this initial run-in.)

Despite the challenges for the day we had a very enjoyable hike, up from the valley and across a series of small ridges through various iterations of field and forest, including stops at two different backcountry cafes along the way. Clouds began to roll in during the afternoon and soon thunder tolled off in the distance. When we were a few km away from Doberdol the skies finally let loose with the rain, starting slowly but then building up into a decent pour. We spent about 15 minutes underneath a big tree debating whether to attempt to wait out the rain before deciding it was best to push forward and make sure we got to our guesthouse that night in time for dinner.

So we continued on through the rain, getting decently soaked though our packs stayed dry enough under their covers. The thunder continued over our heads, though luckily remained on the far side of the ridge we were hiking beneath. We reached the village of Doberdol (also seasonal) and our guesthouse for the night, Guesthouse Bashkimi, with just enough time before dinner to settle our packs into our room and wash up a bit.

Day 4 [Mt. Gjeravica from Doberdol, AL] (18.2km | 1,419m)

This day was planned as an out-and-back detour from the standard PoB route, to cross over the border from Albania into Kosovo and grab the peak of Mt. Gjeravica, the tallest peak in Kosovo at 2656m. Dave was feeling a bit tired from the previous three days, and with the plan already being that we would spend a second night at the same guesthouse he decided to take a rest day and explore a bit around Doberdol while I went for the peak.

After breakfast we parted ways and I headed up the valley above Doberdol, passing farms and fields with horses and other livestock. A nicely steep climb brought me to the top of the Peja Pass and I was feeling light and strong with my pack only loaded with the day’s necessities. From there it was a bit of gentle sidehilling and slow ascent up to a nice lake, followed by steep gain to the summit ridge and final push to the top.

After enjoying the view from the top for a bit I decided to take a detour on the way down, continuing on over the top in the opposite direction from which I had come, and eventually looped into a large basin several hundred meters below the peak past a beautiful lake where I stopped for a short swim and lunch. As I finished lunch a large group of tourists showed up, my cue to leave. A short climb back to the summit ridge was my last ascent of the day, before heading back down towards Doberdol along my earlier path, with one more short stop to swim at the first lake I had passed.

Back in Doberdol I joined Dave for another great dinner. This was one of our favorite guesthouses that we stayed in. The facility was comprised of multiple small buildings arranged together on a plot of land, with a few out buildings for dorms, an outhouse complete with shower, and one main hall where all the guests ate dinner and breakfast together. That second night we ended up chatting with a few people who were coming the opposite direction on the PoB trail and got some good intel from them on how to handle some modifications we were planning for the next stages of our hike.

Day 5 [Doberdol, AL -> Lake Hrid, MNE] (9.6km | 841m)

This was the most significant of our deviations from the standard PoB route. At this point the normal route heads into Kosovo for a few days before looping back around into Plav, Montenegro. I had decided to cut off that section and take us directly across from Doberdol to Plav, and opt to use the extra days later in the Grebaje Valley. We were still doing fine on time, though, and so decided to split what would otherwise have been a very long day into two, camping for the night around the beautiful Lake Hrid.

The day opened overcast as we made a very steep climb up the side of the valley cradling the village of Doberdol. From the top of that ridge we made a small detour to Tromeda peak, the triple point intersection of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro at 2366m. We were socked in with clouds and fog, so not much of a view, but still fun to stand on the triple point.

The rest of the hike over to Lake Hrid was fairly easy walking along some plateaus and wide rolling ridgelines, mostly beneath cloudy skies but with nice views along the way. Even with less than ideal weather conditions, the scenery of the mountains around us was just incredible. I’ve remarked multiple times after this trip how any “worst scenery” section of the PoB was still comparable to some of the best hiking I’ve done anywhere else.

We reached Lake Hrid in the early afternoon and had a nice warm lunch of noodles before I went for a (very cold) swim as the sun graced us with its presence for a few minutes. When the sun came out for longer we spent some time lounging in the woods by the shore of the lake, before heading back up the trail just a bit to a stone cabin / shelter that we had passed on the way in. We had heard about this from our friends in Doberdol and decided to check it out as a possible place to spend the night. It was nicely situated right on the knoll of a ridge with great views in both directions, spring-water pumped into a basin nearby, and a picnic table for dinner. Inside the shelter was sparse but welcome accommodations, with four raised wooden sleeping platforms. We ended up with the place to ourselves (apart from a visiting dog and herd of cows) and both agreed it was one of the nicest nights we spent on the trail.

Day 6 [Lake Hrid, MNE -> Plav, MNE] (13.8km | 201m)

The next morning we headed towards the town of Plav, Montenegro, which would be the largest town we passed through along our route, and the only one with access to standard grocery stores and restaurants.

The route down from the mountains gradually gave up elevation as we passed through fields and forest, alternating between single track, farmer’s tracks, and maintained dirt roads.

We got into Plav a bit after noon and headed towards the hostel where we would spend the night, stopping along the way for some kebab and fries that were probably just average but tasted amazing in the moment. Once checked in to the hostel we sorted gear and disposed of some trash before showering and taking some time to relax for a bit. That evening we went down the street to a local restaurant for another great meal. While Plav is not the most picturesque town, it was still nice to enjoy the comfort of civilization for a night before heading back into the woods.

Day 7 [Grebaje Valley, MNE] (3.7km, | 627m)

After breakfast at the hostel we paid for a car ride from the owner to take us into the nearby Grebaje Valley, a stupendously gorgeous valley guarded by tall mountains and cliffs on three sides, commonly referred to as one of the most picturesque places in Montenegro (and we would probably agree). The day was overcast and a bit drizzly, so we didn’t plan much in the way of hiking. We just carried our gear from the valley entrance where the car left us, up the road past a few assorted guesthouses, and to a nice field and camping area past the edge of the developed areas. Over the afternoon a few other cars and camper vans would arrive to spend the night, but with plenty of space to spread out it didn’t feel crowded at all.

With a big day hike planned for the next day, we decided to spend the afternoon exploring the slopes of the valley around us before dinner. A short but very steep scramble partway up the trail leading to Ocnjak peak satisfied us well with some excellent views across the valley and excited anticipation for the next day’s adventure.

The valley, like locales all along our trip, was also home to more than a few stray dogs, one of which decided that we looked like the chumps most likely to share our food with him. Despite keeping our dinner to ourselves, I still woke up partway through the night to find him huddled underneath the fly of our tent and pressing in against my sleeping bag. While he had been very friendly to us, I was concerned about fleas and miscellaneous disease, so I shooed him away.

Day 8 [Grebaje Valley, MNE] (14.5km | 1,478m)

Our original plan was to do a 2-day overnight hike into the highcountry above the Grebaje Valley, but this idea eventually underwent several modifications, some on purpose and others due to unfortunate necessity.

After discussing with the host at our previous hostel and another detailed look at the map we decided to adjust our plan into two day hikes out of the valley, coming back to our campsite at the valley floor to spend the night in-between. This ended up being a wise decision as the spots I had been eyeballing on the map as potential backcountry camping sites turned out to be less than ideal when we passed by on our day hikes.

For our first and primary day hike we chose to hike a modified version of the “three peaks” trail, passing over Volušnica, Talijanka, and Popadija peaks (one of the most scenic and popular routes in the valley). Not long after starting up from the valley floor we made our first, unintentional modification to the loop when we played a bit fast-and-loose with our trailfinding and after a bit of bushwacking ended up headed up the switchbacks towards Karaual peak instead of our intended start towards Popadija. We realized too late to change our plans and so we grabbed an extra fourth peak before looping around along our previously considered overnight route towards the remaining section of the three peaks loop.

Passing over Popadija we had cloudy skies that opened up for us by the time we crested the top of Talijanka, giving us stupendous views across the Grebaje valley and all of the amazingly rugged high backcountry surrounding it.

On the way down from Talijanka towards Volušnica Dave began feeling a bit off, which we at first attributed to just fatigue and elevation. But we soon realized it was more than that as he quickly progressed into a bout of serious nausea that had him lying on the side of the trail just trying to catch his breath. With 5km and 600m of descent still beneath us, dusk beginning to fall, and no idea what sort of affliction Dave was grappling with, I think we were both feeling uneasy about our prospects that evening.

As I was weighing up a handful of progressively worse options, Dave made a heroic rally and got himself headed down the trail, using his poles to keep himself moving while I took his pack (very lucky for both of us that we had decided on a day-trip and not an overnight). We took a minor shortcut to skip Volušnica and head down directly, and over the next four or five hours we slowly made our way down to the valley floor as Dave continued to doggedly fight off the swift advances of what we eventually decided must have been a mean case of Norovirus. (There were previous reports of the virus going around the PoB that summer, and we had been washing our hands religiously, yet it seemed our luck eventually ran out.)

We reached the valley floor around 9pm to find a piece of good luck. One of the guesthouses was still open and they still had accommodation available for the night. We got a nice 3/4-person cabin (complete with toilet and shower!) all to ourselves for what ended up being one of the nicest accommodations that we had during the entire trip. Dave got himself wrapped up in bed while I humped some night-essentials gear from our nearby campsite back to the cabin before passing out myself.

Day 9 [Grebaje Valley, MNE] (5.7km | 1,451m)

When we woke the next morning Dave was thankfully still with the living, but pretty far from 100%. I went over to the main guesthouse for breakfast and brought back a plate of pancakes for him. Despite definitely still being ill, Dave was confident that it wasn’t getting any worse and if anything he was already over the worst of it, having passed through that the previous night. We decided that a day or two of rest would do him well, and it was to our great luck that this happened here in the Grebaje valley and not on any of the previous remote wild-camping nights. We ended up booking the cabin for another two nights. Dave had the facilities of the guesthouse and flat valley floor to explore, looking up at the beautiful mountains around us as he recovered. And I had immediate access into those mountains for a few extra day hikes.

This first day I took an extremely steep trail up the south side of the valley towards Veliki Vrh peak. Relentless climbing gained almost 1500m in under 3km (5000ft in <2mi), mostly along good (though slick) trail, but occasionally degrading into bits of careful scrambling. I eventually reached the Krošnjina vrata saddle still some 300m below the peak to find that any semblance of human “trail” mostly ended there, and what continued on could only be described as a trail for adventurous goats. I crossed over the saddle to continue poking my way along and was greeted with roughly 1000m of exposure as the slope rapidly dropped away beside me down to the next valley floor. After going only a few hundred meters trail distance I found that while the scrambling was definitely solid and probably no more than a very occasional class 3 move, the continuous presence of such exposure and knowledge that I was up there alone started to weigh heavily on me. After taking several breaks to stop and collect my thoughts I eventually turned around still well short of the summit, just glad to be facing the white-knuckle scramble down in daylight.

Day 10 [Grebaje Valley, MNE] (10.6km | 1,170m)

The next day Dave was feeling much better, joining me for breakfast at the guesthouse, but not quite certain how excited he felt about hefting his overnight bag again. We had 3 stages left from the original plan and 3 hiking days available to finish them in. [Original plan had been taxi back to Plav then three stages: a) Plav -> Vusanje; b) Vusanje -> Buni i Jezerce lake valley; c) Buni i Jezerce -> Theth]

With the following day’s weather not looking so great we did some thinking and map staring to see what other options we could come up with. Eventually we settled on spending another day in the Grebaje Valley while the weather was still beautiful, then catching a taxi directly to Vusanje (skipping the Plav -> Vusanje stage), and following the low-route from Vusanje to Theth over the Qafa pass, rather than the high route into the Buni i Jezerce lake valley. We could take our time and split that segment from Vusanje -> Theth in two depending on how strong we were feeling and how the weather held out.

Dave was feeling much better and so spent our last day in the Grebaje Valley hiking around the valley floor and foothills, while I decided to go for a different sort of hiking adventure. By this point we had experienced several encounters with “phantom” trails, shown clearly on the map but not a trace of which to be found in real life. A legacy of irregular trail upkeep and sporadic map updates. On my map was marked a concentration of several trails at the very end of the valley leading up to Talijanka peak from the backside, but what I had seen of that area from vantage points during my previous days’ hikes gave little confidence in the actual existence of those trails. So I decided to head right for them and do some fun bushwhacking to see just what had happened to those trails. (More or less this is what I tell myself – the truth may be closer to just being a numbskull who lost his way in the woods and refused to turn back.)

Either way, come late morning I found myself crashing through underbrush and fighting my way up increasingly steep slopes beneath a beautiful forest canopy. The steeper sections had little in the way of vegetation apart from large trees, which made for an entertaining time slip-sliding up through loose dirt and ankle deep dead leaves, at what must have been nearing 45° aspects. At some point I had picked up a shadow in the form of a friendly Russian couple who were looking for the trail up Talijanka. I had done my best to explain to them that that was where I was headed, and indeed the map showed a trail where we stood, but this was not the normal route that most people take. I don’t think the communication was very successful.

Eventually I found myself beneath a rock face broken up by sporadic vegetated ledges. I was bumbling around at the base trying to figure out how to get past this newest obstacle when the man shouted up asking if the trail went this way. I answered that the trail had ended a ways back, some time before I had clawed my way up the 45° dirt slope. His exasperated response was lost amidst the woods and that was the last I heard of them. Hopefully they managed to have a nice day on some actual trails elsewhere.

After a few false starts up the rocks I realized that I could traverse far to the side and eventually reach a weakness where the rock gave way again to steep forested slope allowing me to continue upwards. I managed to pass the steep rocky section and found myself coming out from beneath the forest canopy into a rocky gully choked up nicely with brush and bramble. I crashed through that for a bit, and kept eyeballing the hillside above me thinking that if I were a trail-builder I’d be awfully inclined to build a trail just right above where this gully ran. Not more than a few moments later I saw a head bobbing along, weaving in and out of sight about 15m above me. I called up to politely ask if the going was any easier up above, and indeed there was a very nice trail as it turned out. The hiker I met was only a little bit confused why I had been down in the gully, in fact they told me that they had been hearing me for some time and thought that I was a bear.

Once on the normal trail the rest of the day went by without much adventure, though still a lovely day in the mountains. I made it up the backside of Talijanka, spent some more time taking in the stupendous views, and then headed down into the valley along the standard path, this time looping over Volušnica peak to see those views as well.

During those three days in Grebaje Valley we also met the only other Americans that we ran into during PoB trek, a nice older couple from Maine who were on a semi-guided PoB tour. We shared a beer with them one afternoon and chatted a bit about New England and our experiences in the Balkans, also getting a few useful ideas from them on how to connect the remaining stage of our hike.

Day 11 [Vusanje, MNE -> Theth Valley, AL] (16.0km | 1,243m)

We took our final breakfast at the now very familiar guesthouse and then got into a taxi that took us first back in the direction of Plav and then south to the village of Vusanje. There we started off on foot again, now in good health but sad that our trip was in its penultimate act. We had 2 days to make it the 22km back to Theth, mildly overcast weather to begin our day and a worsening forecast predicted as the day went on. With that forecast in mind we decided to follow the “low” / standard PoB route to Theth, giving up on the higher elevation detour through the Buni i Jezerces lakes valley (which proved to be the smart & correct decision). We had no specific plan for where to camp that night, but the map showed what looked like several decent options so we decided to play it by ear based on how strong we were feeling and how the weather treated us.

The first ~ 7.5km out from Vusanje followed a mix of dirt road and easy going paths as we gently gained a few hundred meters of elevation up the Ropojana valley. Along the way we passed the Oko Skakavice, or the Grasshoper’s Eye, a beautiful pool of springwater bubbling up from underground and feeding a large stream. We stopped there for a bit to have a snack and skip some stones before moving on.

Later in the day we ate lunch just past the dry Lake Ropojan, under the shelter of forest as the first sprinkling of rain passed momentarily overhead. After lunch we made our way up the first of the day’s serious sections of gain, coming out into a plateau of semi-alpine pasture above where the rain and wind started to pick up again. We donned hardshells and pressed on, past a heard of sheep and shepherd’s hut, the wind slowly increasing and very kindly lashing the rain directly into our faces.

We knew that some few km and several hundred meters of gain ahead of us was the Quafa pass, with a very steep descent on the far side shown on the map contours. The rain had started to make the trail slick in places, with the wind now coming on strong enough that I had to tie my packcover on with spare cordage in order to keep it from whipping off. Our initial plan had been to find a place to camp in a high meadow somewhere before crossing over the pass, but the current weather wasn’t exactly inviting us to stop, relax, and pitch camp. On the other hand, we had no idea what the steep descent on the far side looked like and how safe it would be in this weather.

We did eventually pass one nice flat and grassy campsite next to a sickly-green colored lake, and would perhaps have stopped there if it had not been occupied just moments before by a group of three hikers coming from the other direction. After some hemming and hawing we pushed over the pass and to our good fortune found the far side significantly more protected from the harsh weather. The trail, while steep, was mostly cut with a generous amount of switchbacks that made the descent straightforward, though a bit tedious and grinding on the knees.

Eventually we reached the base of the headwall and the forest on the floor of Theth Valley. We found a very nice spot to camp just up the path from a small spring and under the shelter of a big tree that helped to shelter us from the remainder of the rain that night.

Day 12 [Theth Valley, AL -> Theth, AL] (5.9km | 124m)

What was left of the storm had mostly blown itself out by morning, and we crawled out of our tent to a morning that quickly opened up into a sunny blue sky. With only 6km to go to the end of our hike, and all downhill, we had plenty of time for a relaxing morning in camp. We exploded all of our gear out into a full-on yardsale across our campsite (and blocking most of the trail in a few points) to let it dry in the morning sun while we cooked a lazy breakfast. We were visited a few times by the local pack of 4-5 stray dogs roaming up and down the trail, no doubt also in search of their own breakfast.

We left camp with an early alpine start of ~11am, and started the easy walk down the rest of the valley to Theth. The first bit was still along dirt paths, but we soon picked up a dirt road and followed that the rest of the way, passing little noteworthy scenery apart from a few old concrete bunkers, just a few of thousands spread throughout the country, a legacy of Albania’s isolationist communist dictator during the cold war.

By mid afternoon we had arrived in Theth, at the end of our (hiking) journey. We had a night booked at a very nice guesthouse there, and after washing up spent a few hours playing cards and drinking beer before being served another excellent dinner.

Travel Home

The next day we took a shuttle van from Theth back to Shkoder, along the same route that we took on the way in two weeks prior – but this time somehow I suffered the worst bout of carsickness I had experienced in probably decades. Luckily (for me) halfway through our trip we came across one of the driver’s friends who had a flat tire and so we stopped to help them out, allowing me to lie down on the side of the road for 20 minutes or so to slightly recover. The 2nd half of the drive was along increasingly smooth and less tortuously twisty roads so I manage to make it to Shkoder with my insides still inside, though just barely.

In Shkoder we hung out for an hour or so at a cafe where Dave got a sandwich and I munched on a few chips. Then we took a coach-style bus a few hours back to Tirana, arriving in the evening and checking in to a hostel there. The next morning we joined a walking tour of the city for a couple hours before I had to catch a taxi to the airport for my flight back to Belgium. Dave stayed for the rest of the day and another night before taking his flight out early the next morning.

It was good to come home, but sad parting ways with Dave and leaving an area that was one of the most phenomenal hiking destinations I have ever travelled to. I’ve been on so many amazing trips across the US and Europe now, with so many unique and special experiences. This trip was really on another level though, and I have to say fully lived up to the five years of anticipation I had been building up.

+++ Epilogue+++ [ October 14 – 16, 2023]

There was just one nagging detail in the back of my mind: how we had been stormed out of our original goal of hiking through the Buni i Jezerces lake valley and summiting Maja e Jezerces peak, at 2694m the highest peak in the entire PoB mountain range. It was absolutely the right decision to back off that attempt on our PoB trip, the weather we had on the “low” route was nasty enough and would have been even more treacherous on the “high” route, with a summit attempt right out of the question.

But I still had a few vacation days left and another month or two before the peaks got snowed in for the season. So as soon as I got back to Belgium I started watching the weather for a moment when it would align with a weekend I could take a few extra days off from work and head back to finish off this last objective.

I got that window in the middle of October, and it in fact turned out to be the last window of the season, with the first winter storm hitting those mountains the last night I was there. On a Friday morning I flew from Brussels to Podgorica, Montenegro, then took a long and slow bus ride from Podgorica to Plav, where I spent the night at the same hostel Dave and I stayed our first time through.

Day 13 [Vusanje, MNE -> Buni Jezerce, AL] (14.3km | 1,574m)

Saturday morning I got another taxi ride from the AirBnB host down the road to Vusanje, where I started walking up the Ropojana valley and for a few hours retracing our steps from just a couple months prior. I passed the Grasshoper’s Eye and found the water level to be over a meter lower than it was when we came past in August. The spring water was completely still, not flowing or even bubbling a little bit. As I continued my hike onwards I reflected that as I had been watching the weather forecast the past two months I hadn’t seen any storms come through this area at all, and started to wonder in what state I would fine the alpine lakes above me, and whether they would supply the water I was counting on for the next 48 hours.

Around 4.5km from Vusanje I turned off our previous path and headed up a steep hillside on the SE side of the valley, quickly gaining 600m over the next 2.5km as I ascended through beautiful fall forest up to the Buni i Jezerce lake valley. I arrived at the bottom of this high valley around 1pm and set off to explore the lakes and find myself a campsite for the night.

This valley and its alpine lakes have a reputation of being one of the most beautiful backcountry locales in Albania, and I had seen many stunning pictures online of crystal clear alpine lakes tinted classic light blue beneath a stunning array of peaks. As I approached the first of the six lakes the peaks above me lived up to all expectations but the lake bed was completely dried up, nothing left apart from a muddy, marshy shadow of what I had been hoping for.

Luckily the next lake was a better hit, still with a significant amount of water though way below the obvious high water mark from earlier in the season. There were a few more flies hovering around the surface of the lake than I would normally have preferred, but the water looked clear and I had a good filter so figured I would probably survive. I set up camp on a small grassy knoll overlooking the lake, filtered some water and had a nice noodle lunch while taking in the scenery.

I had no specific plans for the rest of the day, with the main ascent planned for the next day, so I loaded a few snacks and some water in my pack and set off to scramble and explore around the valley a bit. I hiked south up the valley, passing by the other lakes and finding them all severely diminished and some others also completely dried up. As it turned out the lake that I set camp next to was the only one with any real drinkable water in it. It was a brief and minor disappointment that I wouldn’t get to see the lakes sparkling with their beautiful ice and snow fed cool blue water, but that quickly faded as the rest of the scenery continued to amaze with every step.

I made my way up to the southern end of they valley and spent a couple hours poking around a scramble up the Maja e Bojes peak. Near the top I got cliffed out after taking the wrong route, and after a bit of careful scrambling to get back down decided I would rather sit and have a beer than try to find another way up. From my vantage I could see the entire path across the Jezerces pass that links the Buni i Jezerces and Ropojana valleys, and what would have been Dave and my route during our PoB trip if we had come this way. Seeing the pass in person solidified my confidence in our choice to avoid this high route during the stormy weather we had – hiking through this in the intense wind and rain would have been extremely uncomfortable, and we wouldn’t have gotten any views through the fog and clouds anyways.

Eventually I returned to my camp, filtered a bit more water, and cooked up some dinner as the light faded. Some time later I was sitting on a rock in the dark, enjoying the immense field of stars above me when I caught sight of two headlamps bobbing their way down the valley above me. Until this point I had had the entire valley to myself, but it looked like I now had visitors. Due to the aspect of the valley walls I could see their lights and hear them exploring around for quite some time before they eventually came by the lake where I was camped. The two guys were a tad bit surprised to find me just sitting there alone in the dark, but were very friendly and exchanged pleasantries as they walked through to go down to the lake and get some water. They had checked all of the other lakes in the valley and confirmed that none of them had good water except for this one.

Day 14 [Maja Jezerces] (14.2km | 1,209m)

The next morning I awoke, cooked some breakfast, and prepped my bag for an out-and-back day adventure. The hike back to the top and southern end of the valley went quickly, and I turned towards the main objective for this long weekend, Maja Jezerces. The trail crossed a small fan of snow and then headed up into a plateau of rolling stony ground, interspersed with big gaps and chasms in the ground, and piles of boulders above. It was a fascinating and unique landscape to hike through. The trail towards the peak was mostly well cairned enough to follow by that alone, though occasional consultation with GPS helped as well.

I reached the pass beneath Maja Jezerces peak in the late morning and from there the real ascent began. Looking up at the peak from the pass it felt impossible that there could be a 3rd class trail gaining access to the summit, with the entire peak guarded by steep cliffs and imposing jumbles of rock. The trail picked its way back and forth across small plateaus linked by short scrambles through weaknesses in the cliffs. It was an exciting scramble, with amazing scenery and exposure behind and a very imposing peak above. The crux came in the form of a steep gully, maybe ~60° angle or so and about 15-20m in height. There were plenty of handholes and small ledges in the rock to navigate, with no individual movement being particularly challenging, just barely touching on class 3 in a few spots. But combined with the exposure beneath and behind, and the fact that the entire route up had been covered with a nice dusting of loose pebble scree, made it feel quite engaging.

From the top of that gulley the path led horizontally through a hidden weakness in the cliff face to the right, at one point curving out over the edge of the cliff with even more stupendous exposure below. After that some more scree scrambling led to the summit ridge which was made up of chunky car-sized boulders. A bit of rock hopping and I was on the peak, with clear visibility all around as I sipped some beer and made myself noodles for lunch. As I ate a few clouds drifted by but the sky still remained mostly clear, offering amazing views of the mountains in all 360°.

Descent back to my camp went smoothly, if a bit slow on the scrambly sections as the exposure in front of me was strong encouragement to work hard at keeping my feet from sliding out beneath me. At the 3rd class gully scramble I met the two guys from the previous night and stopped to chat with them for a bit. They were from Scotland and here for a weeklong backpacking adventure, planning to camp again in the Buni i Jezerce valley this night after summiting the peak.

I arrived back to my camp in the late afternoon and briefly considered my options for the night. I was planning to hike back to Plav on my third day, and starting that hike from my current camp would make for a very long day. Combined with a recent forecast of inclement weather that night I decided to quickly stuff my tent and gear into my pack and hump it all down a few km and 600m into the much flatter Ropojana valley, which would give me a better starting point for my last day and hopefully less severe weather. I had to move a bit quickly to keep with the daylight, and after all of the descent already completed that day the final hike down was a bit rough, especially carrying the water I needed to support dry camping that night.

I made it down to the flat of the Ropojana valley just as dusk was settling and found a nice spot next to a tree in a grassy field to set camp for the night. The evening had become heavily overcast, though no precipitation had fallen yet as I went to sleep. A few hours later into the night I heard what sounded like a freight train chugging up the valley beneath me, and I listened over the next few minutes as the sound grew louder until the wind front rolled over my camp and started up a serious challenge to my tent-pitching skills. At one point I got out and set a few extra guy-lines and stakes where I could, and ended up getting through the night just fine without a collapsed tent. The winded died down sometime early morning, but rain came and went for the entire night, leaving for good only just before dawn.

Day 15 [Vusanje, MNE -> Plav, MNE] (25.4km | 1,471m)

From my camp it was an easy ~4km walk down a dirt road into the village of Vusanje where I was able to restock my water from one of the guesthouses. On Dave and my PoB trip we had skipped the Plav – Vusanje stage due to lack of time, and I was excited to walk it now (in the reverse direction) and see what was there. We had not been too concerned about missing it because while of course beautiful, it did not contain any truly unique points of interest compared to some of the other stages. On this return visit I found it a very nice hike with beautiful sections in the middle, but a bit boring at the beginning and end so indeed not too unfortunate that we missed it earlier.

From Vusanje the trail followed a road up into the hills for a good 4 km or so, with the first half of it being paved and the second half ugly gravel. There were a few nice views across the hillsides but not much to compare with the rest of the tour. After reaching a saddle point I headed north along a rolling ridgeline of mixed forest and fields. I was now back up at an elevation similar to the Buni i Jezerces valley and all along the forested sections of path the ground was covered with snow and the trees still iced-over, remnants of the previous nights storm. I wondered about my Scottish acquaintances and what kind of night they had had and what sort of morning they woke up to.

The trail passed over a few named peaks along the ridgeline, with Maje e Borit providing the highpoint for the day at 2074m. The peaks were all rounded and gentle, covered by alpine fields rather than rocky scrambles, but still gave beautiful views with Lake Plav and Plav itself in one direction, and the Grebaje Valley and those mountains off in another. The trail was enjoyable but not particularly noteworthy when compared against (the very high standard) of the previous days and previous trip stages.

Eventually I began the long descent from the ridgeline, first dropping through a series of lower elevation meadows and then into a long forested stretch that would lead me all the way back to Plav. This section started out on single track trails and eventually merged with a series of dirt roads that slowly switchbacked and descended, gradually passing some homesteads and other increasing signs of civilization. While the first hours through the forest were nice, eventually the long dirt road turned into a bit of a slog and I was glad when I finally saw the lake and Plav city in front of me. I headed back to the same hostel once again, went out to grab some dinner and then crashed in bed for the night.

These extra three days in Montenegro/Albania were a great way to end the hiking season for last fall, and an amazing bonus on top of the already phenomenal hike that Dave and I completed during the summer. This region has so much beautiful and still wild nature, I am already considering the next hike there…