Peak 17 | Zla Kolata, Montenegro | 2534m | 9th June 2019
- Adam Stevenson
- Jun 9, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 12, 2019
I had read heard a lot of good stuff about this one before I went as well as all of the photos I had seen looked incredible. But nothing could have quite prepared me for doing this one for myself.
Quick Summary
• Starting point - Vusanje
• Route taken - Classic Route
• Total ascent - 1500 m
• Total length - 19 km round trip
• Total time for the climb - 9¾ hours
• Expense - #Low
• Equipment - #StandardHike
• Difficulty - #Level3 of 5
• Enjoyment - #5stars of 5*
Climbing the Highest point in Montenegro
Driving towards the South-East of Montenegro the night before the hike me and my friend Tom were heading to the village of Vusanje. We had reserved to stay in a timber guest cabin very close to the start of the trail. However a huge un-forecast thunderstorm came in with torrential rain that turned the roads into canals within minutes. The weather seemed too bad to be looking for an isolated timber cabin. So we ended up stopping next to a hotel as we passed through Gusinje wanting to pick up on some open wifi, but we but just ended up staying there instead.
The following morning I set off on my own, and it was one of those hikes where I wasn't expecting to see anyone else for the rest of the day. The high point seems to be situated well off the beaten track for most tourist and even locals for that matter. There wasn't even anywhere obvious to park the car. So I just pulled up at the side of an un-surfaced road where there was a bit of an clearing, got my bag together, and set off.
About an hour or so into my hike, to my surprise as I turned a corner there were two people perched on a rock next to the trail. They were accompanied by a large golden retriever sat down next to them and introduced themselves as Kim from Norway, and Santa from Lithuania. As it turned out that the dog was a stray dog that had followed them up from the local village several kilometers ago.
They were also heading to Zla Kolata, and again, to my surprise, they were also doing the high points of every European country. They would be the second interaction within two mountains where I've met others doing the same challenge as me. Either it might be a more common task to do than I first realized, or it was just a sheer coincidence. I had not yet worked it out.
We set off towards the mountain together and the dog continued to follow us, leading the way for a lot of it. Along the route we would pass several more groups of people. Three French that were doing a multi-day #Balkans trail, and then other groups that were heading the opposite way. We lost the loyalty of the dog at this point to one of these groups heading back down. I'd guess that he had enough of the ascent, but he still did pretty well and made it to about 2000m up.
Things got a little tricky on our final part towards the main peaks of Maja Kolata & Zla Kolata. The trail was much less worn, and a lot of it was still burred under a fair bit of snow in the valley. We were really struggling to find any part of the trail at one point. So we decided to just head straight up the smaller mountain of Maja Kolata and out of the snow. This did involve a bit of scramble and I wasn't completely sure if we were making the right choice at this point. But it paid off.
Along the last 100m of the ascent we reconnected with a trail and made it to the top of our first peak of the day, Maja Kolata (2525m). The views from here were like nothing I had seen before. The rocks and cliffs had such a unique formation.
We would walk along the ridge from here and descend back down to the saddle that connects the two peaks before making the final climb to the to top of Montenegro. It had taken me around 6 hours to reach this point from the car. But the decent was far quicker. We managed to even take advantage of some of the remain snow in places and slide down.
As the sun was setting the lighting looked stunning. I would have loved to of camped up there for the evening. For me this mountain was such an fantastic experience. I will almost certainty be looking to return here at some point.
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