Durmitor National Park, peaks, glacial lakes and canyons

If I had to pick one landscape in Montenegro away from the sea, it would be this one. Durmitor is a limestone massif carved by glaciers, with jagged summits, dark-water lakes and canyons so deep that UNESCO calls the Tara Europe’s deepest gorge. It’s also the country’s largest protected area, and one of the few places where you can stroll round a lake with children in the morning and set off on a serious mountain route the same day.

What Durmitor National Park actually is

The national tourist board gives it 39,000 hectares, ranging from 500 to 2,523 metres, and dates the national park to 1952. It went on the World Heritage list in 1980, and in 2005 UNESCO extended the site to match the park boundaries. Its protection goes back further still, since the Black Lake was protected in 1907, and the Tara basin has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since the 1970s.

The Žabljak tourist board counts 48 peaks above 2,000 metres, 18 of them over 2,300 and seven over 2,400. The highest is Bobotov Kuk, which the same board puts at 2,523 metres. Between the mountains lie 18 glacial lakes, known locally as mountain eyes, and around the massif run the canyons of the Draga, Sušica, Komarnica and Tara.

UNESCO also singles out the wildlife. Over 1,600 vascular plants grow on the massif, there’s an old stand of black pine with trees several centuries old, and brown bear, wolf and wildcat live here, along with 130 recorded bird species, golden eagle among them.

The Black Lake and the park’s trails

Most people know Durmitor through the Black Lake, three kilometres from Žabljak. That’s where the park’s visitor centre is, rowing boats are hired out at €10 an hour, and the nature trail of about 3.6 km begins. Close by, on the shore, the park has set up a small reading forest with loungers and boxes of books.

Beyond that the park has 25 waymarked trails totalling about 150 km. The ones National Parks recommends run from Barno to Zminje and the Black Lake, from Todorov do to Prutaš, from the Black Lake to the ice cave via Lokvice, from Sedlo to Bobotov Kuk via Zeleni vir, and from the Šarban spring to the Škrka lakes. For viewpoints without a big effort, the park suggests Ćurevac at 1,625 metres, Sedlena greda at 2,227 and Nedajno at 1,480, looking down on the Sušica canyon and Mala Crna Gora.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Žabljak before prices climb.

Canyons, river and adventure

The Tara Canyon is part of the park, and with it the country’s best-known rafting. National Parks says rafting is safest from 1 July to 15 September, when the water level is right, and that it’s run by private agencies. Kayakers paddle it in sections, from the Bistrica to Splavište over about 20 km graded III to V, then on to Radovan luka and Brštanovica on gentler stretches.

In winter the park changes character. A 6.7 km snowshoe trail runs between the Savin Kuk ski area and the Black Lake, marked with winter waymarks, and snowshoes can be hired at the visitor centre for €4 a day.

Sleeping inside the park

If you want a night in the mountains, there are two staffed huts. Škrka, between the Big and Little Škrka lakes on the way to Bobotov Kuk, sleeps around 9 in beds and wooden platforms, asks you to bring a sleeping bag and is staffed from mid-June until September ends. Sušica, on the shore of the lake it’s named after and a short way from the ring road, offers four doubles in season, late June to September, at €10 per person per day. There are also two bivouac shelters open all year, Lokvice at 1,800 metres and Kalice between Šljeme and Savin Kuk.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Žabljak before prices climb.

A little history

National Parks sums up centuries of human presence. Celts and Illyrian tribes in the Tara valley, the Roman province of Prevalis, Slavs from the 7th century and, later, Ottoman rule until 1878. At Preslica, beside an old caravan route, there’s an inscription to Mithras carved into the rock, and medieval cemeteries with stećci tombstones from the 14th and 15th centuries are scattered through the park. During the Second World War, between October 1941 and June 1942, this was the Durmitor partisan republic.