Peak 19 | Mount Korab, Albania & Macedonia | 2764m | 15th June 2019
- Adam Stevenson
- Jun 15, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 13, 2019
The highest point of two countries.
Quick Summary
• Start point - Strezimir
• Route taken - Via Macedonian side
• Total ascent - 1400 m
• Total length - 17.2 km round trip
• Total time for the climb - 10 hours
• Expense category - #Low
• Equipment - #StandardHike
• Difficulty - #Level2 of 5
• Enjoyment - #3stars of 5*
I did this peak as an organized hike through meet-up group that I had come across online. I had stumbled across Marta's to live to travel on Instagram about a month or so before and noticed that she also had the same ambition of reaching the highest point of every European country. So I messaged Marta about a possibility of doing one of the peaks together and she invited me to her next planned hiking event to climb Mount Korab that is the highest point of both Albania and North Macedonia. It is only one of two European high points that are shared between neighbouring countries. The other being Mont Blanc that is shared between France and Italy.
As much as I wanted to at the time I couldn't give a solid answer. As with the nature of our trip as a trio - I didn't know with any certainty what I would be doing over the following few days, never mind having a commitment over a month in advance. I left it like that for a while. But several weeks later I realized that it would actually fit in very smoothly into my schedule as I would be travelling across the Southern Balkan area at the exact same time. So with just over a week to go, I managed to confirm my position.
I was feeling excited in the days prior to the event. It would be something completely new for me. Arranging to meet a group of complete strangers to do a hike.
I would be doing the hike with six others that had all come out from the UK. After meeting in Tirana, the Albanian capital where the group had flown into, we had a little explore around them before moving on. The plan was to do the hike from the Macedonian side. So we set off on the 5-hour drive for our place to stay by the mountain.
The following morning we had a quick breakfast at a cafe close to where we were staying and we met our local Macedonian guide, Meto from Shar Outdoors. He would be showing us the way. Although a guide isn't really necessary for this peak, especially on a nice day in the middle of summer, he had also heard about the planned hike on social media and wanted to get involved. But it was actually really great having him along as he shared loads of his local knowledge and facts.
The journey there started off like many of the others that I'd experienced recently - a long drive (40mins) up an un-surfaced bumpy road. After a while, we came to a checkpoint where we needed to show our passports to some border officers. Eventually, we were finally parked up and ready to get walking at around 10:30 am.
As expected, It was great fun doing this as a group and exchanging stories along the way. The route was quite straightforward but had a lot of ascent, 1400m in total which gets quite steep in some places. The group was a various levels of fitness and hiking ability so we had regular
Only on the last couple hundred meters, there were some remaining snowfields left but they didn't cause many problems. In fact, they made a great slide coming down.
Upon reaching the summit we chilled for around 15 mins while we all regrouped from our different paces. We had all made it which I felt like was a massive achievement as there were points I thought that one or two in the group were not going to complete the whole journey. We started to get some photos but the clouds had come in while we were up there, so we didn't stay for too long.
In total, the hike took us around 5½ hours to ascend. The summit stone had unfortunately broken up and had been crumbling away in the few weeks prior to our visit.
After we finished the hike it was time to get on with the 40 min return down the potholed riddled un-surfaced road. They always seem to take longer during the return.
We treated ourselves and our guide to a celebratory meal of local cheese and meats at the Комплекс Кораб Трница restaurant near the start of the off-road track. I can highly recommend if you find yourself doing this hike!
It had been a long day and our ambitious plans to go out for a drink in Ohrid afterwards quietly settled into just getting into bed. If you would like to hear the story from Marta's point of view then click here to read the story on her blog.
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