The weather in Macedonia was so spectularly good that Toby and I decided we’d attempt to climb Golem Korab on Christmas Eve. It sits on the border with Albania, and is the highest point in both countries. You can enter from the Macedonian side in Mavrovo national park and its surrounded by relatively unspoilt country and icy peaks on both sides.
The road in to the start of the walk was beautiful, with frozen waterfalls and white frosted trees. We had a small run in with the border guards, who where a little bemused when we couldn’t remember the name of the mountain – not only where we going to try to climb the peak in the middle of winter without a guide but we didn’t even know what it was called?
Despite us us looking like complete fools they let us pass after taking a copy of our drivers licences (I assumed they figured they’d need the copies for our death certificates).
The first part of the walk took us over completely iced over tracks, and then steeply up to an abandoned shepherds hut. From here the vistas soon opened up as we gained elevation.
The slopes were covered in thick snow, which for a Brisbanite (read someone living in a sub-tropical environment) like me was hugely exciting. The snow was thick enough to slow us down, and we had some problems locating the track.
We managed to get to just over 2500 metres, but the short daylight hours, and our general lack of competence meant that we were never going to make the top. As we sat up high in the mountains looking into Albania, miles from anyone with the sun on our backs and snow all around, somehow it was hard to feel disappointed.
The best was yet to come (for me anyway) because we got to descend around 800 metres in elevation, largely by sliding down the snowy slopes. This was great fun, even more so when we totally lost control and could only stop by digging our feet in to the snow to launch into uncontrolled stacks down the mountain!
4ks an hour 