Via Dinarica VI, Blidinje Mountain Lodge to Crljenak spring

Wednesday, June 19, 2024
What a great night! We both slept really well and charged all our batteries. Even Patsy’s external battery took a charge. We thought it was fully charged when we left home but maybe we misread the display and it was almost fully discharged.
Not long after leaving the lodge, we had to traverse a large grassy plain with no path or road to follow. Our shoes, and socks, got sopping wet from the morning dew. Not too surprisingly, however, everything had stayed dry under the roof of the lodge's outdoor dining area.
We finally hit a dirt road but didn't get to follow it for long before we had to navigate a path through even taller, denser, and wetter undergrowth.
Turning a corner we caught our first view of Monastery Masna Luka. Wow, it's a fabulous-looking complex of new buildings, just like the Church of St. Francis that we visited a few days ago.
We asked if we could get some water and a kind monk directed us to their bathroom, one of their bathrooms. Very nice and the bathroom featured two sets of adjacent flush toilets and toilette turques. Take your pick. We emptied out the lake water and refilled all our bottles with this, holy, water that was a lot colder. Outside the monk was leading a prayer circle that took the form of mass, as best I could tell.
Almost immediately after leaving the monastery, we came to a spring that was gushing torrents of water from two pipes. This has to be the same source from which the monastery gets its water. Our feet got soaked again, tramping through the skunk cabbage.
From there it was a long, steep climb of a couple of thousand feet during which we had to cross a large valley flanked by enormous limestone cliffs. Fortunately, we didn’t have to descend all the way to the valley floor. Intermittent pools labeled on our maps on the valley floor appeared to be dry but stone circles indicated the area was used for pasture.
Ahead of Patsy and turning a corner I was surprised to see a girl sitting in the shade. She was just as surprised to see me. She thought I was a bear and had her camera ready. Better to be shot with a camera than with bear spray.
Viktorka is 33 years old, from the Czech Republic. She didn't have an InReach and said no one even knew where she was. "Don't your parents worry about you?, I asked her. "Oh, they're used to it already. I've been hiking solo in many different countries in Eastern Europe since I was 17", she said. So far we've only met her and Heidi hiking the Via Dinarica. It's a very lonely trail, a world apart from the Caminos that converge on Santiago. Viktorka's a lot more plucky than Patsy and me.
Patsy and I continued on to climb Veliki Vilinac (2,113 m). It was bare limestone near the summit, reminiscent of San Gorgonio, and it was hot although the breeze was cool. It felt more as though we were climbing a 14,000' peak than a 7,000' peak. Our backpacks are a lot heavier than they would be if we were overnighting to climb San Gorgonio but we thought it was the heat that made it so arduous. The air temperature was cold but the sun's radiant energy was very strong. It was also rather hazy. We believe there must be a large forest fire burning somewhere to the west of us, maybe in Croatia. I tried looking for it online but without success.
Not long after descending from the summit we reached the junction to Planinarska dom Vilinac. I walked down but the hut was, surprise!, closed. I went a little further to fill up two 1 L water bottles at their water source, Janjičar Spring. The water was icy cold - super!
We continued on to a small spring-fed lake, Crljenak, and made camp there at 6,200'. There was no sign of the spring but the water was cool, quite a bit cooler than the water in Blidinje so it must be pretty deep. Not only was the water colder, it was also cleaner than Blidinje's despite the innumerable tadpoles swimming in it.
I'd regained my appetite tonight so I had no problem eating dinner, AlpineAire grilled chicken with spinach alfredo pasta supplemented with Karen's mixed vegetables. This was a lot better than last night's Good To-Go Indian Korma. We started out carrying a total of ten freeze-dried dinners that we brought from home.
11.5 miles

[@laurenbouchie2394]

The trail was a bit vague but you had a beautiful summit views! I think it made it worth it, but I was the one hiking it! LOL