Immediately after bidding farewell to Zeus and descending from the home of the gods, we continued north in our trusty little rental car towards Mt. Korab and the Macedonia border. Korab is one of only two peaks in all of Europe which are the highest points in more than one country (Mont Blanc is the other).
Only two years ago in 2019 a long disputed argument and source of instability in the region was finally ‘settled’ by renaming the country North Macedonia (changed from the most recent official name approved by UN Security Council Resolution in 1993: the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, but widely referred to simply as Macedonia). We later learned at an amazing seaside dinner in Thessaloniki with Constantinos, the cousin of a good friend in So Cal, that the new name is still disliked by the ethnic people of Northern Greece who claim pride in their heritage as Macedonians and prefer the country to the north be named something else altogether. Regardless of the name, we wanted to climb the country’s highest peak and were allowed to pass through their border without any requirement of a negative COVID-19 test or vaccination card.
More than five hours after leaving the trailhead at Mt. Olympus, we arrived at Mavrovo National Park and the quaint mountain guest house of Yasmina.
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| Our off-road machine reaches Strezimir, trailhead location. |
We were up early again the next morning knowing that our two-wheel drive/low-clearance Nissan Micra would need to endure at least 13 km off-road to get us to Strezimir, the starting point of our Mt. Korab adventure. Thankfully we made it without incident and didn’t need to ditch the car and add any more miles of walking than necessary to what would be another long day.
Although our entire trip was a fairly last minute decision, fortunately I had done enough prior research on Korab to know it is not common to run into many others on the trail. (Mostly just sheep and their protective and aggressive dogs). So before leaving I was able to find and download a GPS track onto my Gaia topo maps app on my phone. Anticipating zero cell coverage in this remote area my advance preparation turned out to be a real lifesaver. As the hours of hiking ticked along and elevation gain grew, we encountered much more snow on the slopes than we had expected for this time of year. We didn’t bring crampons or micro spikes so in order to be safe it was critical to avoid slopes with pitches that were too steep. It had also snowed the night before and there were no other people on the trail ahead of us with no telltale footprints to follow. In addition we had no visibility of our target Mt. Korab which was hidden both by clouds and other peaks, so navigating by GPS was the only reasonable way to go.
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| The only crowds encountered on the route all day. |
After running into one dead end with a steep couloir, we turned around and backtracked looking for another way up. It was here that we met the only other people we had seen on the mountain so far that day. It was a Polish couple and we chatted a bit and looked around together at possible ways to ascend. I showed them my GPS track and topo and they said something in Polish and continued to study their paper map. Clearly they were not convinced of my technology because they decided to go in the opposite direction to where I was suggesting and pointing we should go. We parted ways and Denise and I quietly wished them luck under our breath.
About an hour or so later after traversing several very reasonably low-angled snow fields, we reached the snow free summit ridge of Mt. Korab! Here we walked along the border of North Macedonia and Albania, taking in the stunning views until we achieved the “twofer” standing at 2,764 meters (~9,068 feet) the highest peak of both countries!
Until the next adventure…
All the Best,
Paul & Denise
P.S. Fortunately as we were descending we spotted the Polish couple so we knew they were safe. It seemed that at some point they gave up on their approach and ended up following our track up, but they probably decided it was getting too late in the day to go all the way to the summit so they were heading down. Good decision, but a better decision earlier in the day would have been to trust technology ...and the Americanos! :-)
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