Bjelašnica & the Highland Villages

Bjelašnica is the mountain that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, but its real story is the plateau behind the ski slopes — a wide, treeless karst landscape with villages like Lukomir that have been inhabited continuously for centuries. The shepherds here speak a dialect older than the surrounding cities; the stone houses sit unchanged on hillsides where you can see thunderstorms approaching from forty kilometres away.

Tours in this region are longer, more committing, and reward people who like a real day in the hills. Trails are well-trodden by locals but lightly signed; the safety details that come with each tour — spring locations, shelter coordinates, weather signals — are the difference between a memorable day and a stranded one.