Avoiding Being Blown Up on Dinara

The Approach

My dad and I went to the Czech Republic this summer in poor weather. In Prague there was flooding, temperatures in the 40s (8 C or so), and it had been raining every day. For the weekend we chose to fly to Croatia to climb a peak that we thought might be a little warmer and more pleasant, Dinara (1831 m). We thought wrong.


On 29 May we flew into Split, where the weather was fair enough, drizzling with glimpses of the sun. Unable to wait for better weather, on Saturday morning we got in the rental car at 6:00 to drive to Glavaš, about two hours from Split, near Kijevo and Knin, close to the Bosninan border. After getting lost on some winding roads, we arrived in the pouring rain at the village. Parking in what may or may not have been someone's front yard, we began the hike.

The Hike

Within a mile my feet were soaking wet from walking through wet, high grass. Following painted trees and rocks we found our way past the ruins of the Glavaš fortress, careful to stay on the trail--we had been warned of unexploded mines on the mountain. Despite both having jackets for the rain, we were soaked from sweat anyway. After passing about 15 people who hiked at a pace that we described as 'glacial' we emerged from a valley onto the ridge which would lead to the summit.





At about that time the rain turned to snow, and visibility dropped to about 10 m. The temperature decreased and the wind picked up, leaving my dad and I with soaked feet and no gloves, quite cold. We were worried about losing the trail (painted rocks as the only indication of a trail don't work well under snow) amidst an area with landmines, but managed to find the summit. We hiked through snow, which accumulated to about 6-12 inches. At the summit we were both freezing cold, and after having trouble operating the camera with shaking hands we got a couple pictures and got the hell outta there.

Descent

After descending from the ridge the snow eased off a little bit, we warmed up, and finished the hike up with a total time of about 4.5 or 5 hours. Stats on the hike: 16 km, 1200 m elevation gain. On the drive back we caught a glimpse of the cliffs, and saw how beautiful this area would be in better weather.

We had a two hour drive to Split, but we took a detour and drove on some smaller roads and through the city of Knin. The next day we drove to Zadar and took a daytrip to Krka National Park (better than the famed Plivice Lakes National Park many say), which was excellent particularly with the unusually high amount of water in the river. After Zadar we drove back to Split and flew home to Prague.



Note: all of the images are mine and come from my website.

Images

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