CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
172 km round from Žabljak - plan on about 4 h 08 of riding. On the way it passes Trsa, Sedlo Pass and Tara Canyon. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. Sedlo Pass is subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off.
A mountain loop based around Zabljak, Montenegro, via Sedlo Pass. Key character: karst peaks; canyons; high pasture. Surface: paved and mixed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 40 km this is Montenegro Durmitor Ring, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Žabljak claims to be the highest town in the Balkans, at about 1,450 metres, and it sits on a plateau among the peaks of Durmitor, a national park and UNESCO World Heritage site in northern Montenegro. The town is small, a place of low houses and mountain lodges, and it exists mostly for hikers, skiers and the occasional motorcyclist who has made the effort to come this far. Pines and spruce close in around it, the nights are cool even in summer, and the snow comes early.
Read the complete Near Žabljak write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zabljak is where the day begins. Next is Trsa.
Trsa lies in the high, rolling country of north-western Montenegro, close to the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina and not far from the long, narrow reservoir of Lake Piva. It is not a village that appears in many guidebooks, which is why it is pleasant to find: an upland hamlet of stone houses, hay meadows and pine woods, with the limestone summits of the Durmitor massif and the Volujak range somewhere beyond the horizon. The nearest town in Montenegro is Plužine, about ten kilometres away, and Foča in Bosnia is the closest sizeable place across the line.
Read the complete Trsa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Trsa comes up 30 km in. Next is Sedlo Pass.
Sedlo means saddle, and this one, at 1,907 metres, is the high point of the road that circles the Durmitor massif in the north of Montenegro. The road climbs through forest and then through bare limestone country, where the trees thin out and the ridges seem to catch the sky, and at the top, a pass opens to a view of Bobotov Kuk, the highest peak of the range at 2,523 metres, with its grey cliffs streaked with snow. The air is thin, clean and cold, and the silence is broken only by wind and the bells of sheep.
Read the complete Sedlo Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
60 km in you reach Sedlo Pass. Next is Tara Canyon viewpoint.
The Tara river has cut one of the deepest canyons in Europe, a gorge that plunges as much as thirteen hundred metres below the rim at its greatest. It runs through the heart of Durmitor National Park in northern Montenegro, a UNESCO World Heritage area, with the clear green water of the Tara, known as the Tear of Europe, tumbling through rapids at the bottom. Standing at a viewpoint on the rim, you see the walls drop away through layers of pine and rock, with the river a bright thread far below and the sound arriving late.
Read the complete Tara Canyon viewpoint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tara Canyon viewpoint, late in the day. Next is Zabljak.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Near Žabljak write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Zabljak. That is the ride.