Durmitor is the mountain most people picture when they think of northern Montenegro: a limestone massif of bare grey peaks, deep pine forest and small glacial lakes, wrapped on two sides by the canyons of the Tara and the Piva. This report takes you on a walk along the largest Montenegrin mountain and its best known mountain eye, the Black Lake.
What Durmitor is
The massif covers the plateau above Zabljak in the northwest of the country. It has been a national park since 1952 and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1980, together with the Tara canyon. Durmitor carries forty-eight peaks above two thousand metres, the highest of them Bobotov Kuk at 2,523 metres, and eighteen small glacial lakes scattered across the plateau. Montenegrins call those lakes gorske oci, mountain eyes, and the name fits: they are round, cold and very clear, sitting in hollows scooped out by ice.
Zabljak, the town at the centre of it all, stands at about 1,450 metres and is the highest town in the Balkans. It is small and functional rather than pretty, but everything on the mountain starts from it.
Black Lake
Crno jezero lies a little over three kilometres from Zabljak, at around 1,416 metres, and is the largest of the Durmitor lakes. It is really two lakes, the Big and the Small, joined by a narrow channel. In late spring, when snowmelt raises the level, they read as one sheet of water; by the end of a dry summer the channel can shrink to a trickle and they separate again. The dark wall of Meded, the Bear, rises straight behind the far shore and gives the lake both its reflections and, in some tellings, its name.
A well made path circles the shore, roughly three and a half kilometres of nearly flat walking through black pine. It takes about an hour at an easy pace, it is fine for children, and it is the single best introduction to the mountain. Go early: the light is better and the reflections hold before the wind gets up.
Peaks of Durmitor
Beyond the lake the walking gets serious quickly. Bobotov Kuk is the classic summit, usually approached from the Sedlo pass on the circular mountain road or, much longer, from the Black Lake side; it is a full day, with scrambling near the top and no water on the ridge. Other well trodden objectives include Prutas, known for the banded strata on its slopes, Savin Kuk above the ski area, and the ice cave under Obla Glava, which holds ice formations through the summer.
The Durmitor ring road, a loop of about eighty kilometres over the Sedlo pass, is worth a day on its own even if you never leave the car. It crosses open karst pasture dotted with katuns, the summer shepherd settlements, and delivers most of the massif's best roadside views.
Mountain huts
Simple timber huts and cabins stand at the lake and at points around the plateau, the traditional shelter of the Durmitor walker. Weather here changes fast in any month. Thunderstorms build over the ridges in the afternoon through July and August, cloud can close in within minutes, and snow lingers in the north-facing gullies well into June, so carry a shell layer, water and a paper map even for short outings.
Bridge on the river Tara
North of Zabljak the Tara has cut the deepest canyon in Europe, around 1,300 metres at its greatest depth. The Durdevica Tara bridge, a concrete arch of five spans built between 1937 and 1940, crosses it roughly 170 metres above the water. Its story is part of the reason people stop: in 1942 the engineer Lazar Jaukovic, who had helped build it, blew up the central arch to cut the occupying forces' route, and was executed on the bridge itself. The span was rebuilt after the war. The rafting trips that run the Tara between Splaviste and Scepan Polje start not far downstream, most of them in the higher water of late spring and early summer.
When to come
Late June to early September is the reliable hiking window, with wildflowers at their best in early summer and the most settled weather in late August. Autumn brings colour to the beech and clear, cold air. From roughly December to March the plateau is under snow, Zabljak turns into a small ski town on the Savin Kuk slopes, and the Black Lake circuit becomes a walk on ice and packed snow rather than a path.
Getting there
Zabljak is around 150 kilometres from Podgorica. The usual approach is north through Niksic and Savnik, or via Mojkovac and the Tara bridge from the east. Both roads are mountain roads, slower than the distance suggests, and worth doing in daylight the first time. Winter driving on the plateau needs proper tyres.
