Tom`s travels: Bjelašnica (13/04/2025)

On another hiking trip, this time with Nomadi we headed for the Bjelašnica mountain range, visiting its southern part. We left Sarajevo early and before Konjic drove up past the village of Džepi and reaching the vast plateau of Bjelašnica. We drove along the dirt and stone road until we reached a spot where we all parked our cars. Once out of the cars we started our hike, heading slightly down and reaching the village of Blace, a rather abandoned area only used mostly in the summer as pasture and grazing for sheeps and for the sheperherd herding them. We passed by a large flock of sheep and shortly after reached the Blatačko Lake, a small body of water. Just above the lake we stopped at a graveyard surrounding a small chapel where there were also several stećci, monumental medieval tombstones. From there we started following a main trail in the direction of Lukomir. running along the edgeline of the mountain range and overlooking the Rakitnica canyon below. The day was rather cloudy and cold with quite some strong wind. We headed slowly up, with a few ups and downs along the way. Despite thr weather the views over the canyon was really nice and with the peaks of Prenj in the distance, which we had also seen the day before, snowcapped. We stopped at a nice viewpoint, on a minor peak, Markovac at 1458m, for a short break and took some photos, I also noticed a ticket had atatched itself on me and was slowly making its way up my light colored pants so I luckily spotted it and quickly disposed of it. I didn't expect to find one that day. Continuing on we reached the Veliki Lisac, at 1504, and then later the Mali Lisac at 1408. Despite being peaks they weren't really marked and rather just higher points along the ridgeline above the canyon. After the last one we stopped for a longer break, sitting right by the forest edge to protect us from the wind while still enjoying the view. We had our lunches there and then decided we wouldn't cotinue further bur rather start heading back. We walked the same way and eventually got back to the lake. We followed the dirt road and eventually made it back to the cars after just over seven kilometers and 500m of ascent, so a rather light hike all in all.