Читать книгу The Peaks of the Balkans Trail. Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo онлайн

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The Prokletije mountains are characterised by broad, glaciated valleys and steep-sided limestone peaks, particularly in the western half of the range in Albania and Montenegro – in Kosovo, the eastern half of the range has a more gentle profile. They include the highest peak in Montenegro (Maja Kolata, 2528m) and the highest peak in Kosovo (Gjeravica, 2656m), as well as the highest mountain in the Dinaric Alps, Maja Jezerces (2694m) in Albania (the highest mountain in Albania is Korab, 2764m, which lies further southeast on the border with Macedonia). All three of these can be climbed with only slight detours from the Peaks of the Balkans Trail, as can several other prominent peaks.

The Prokletije mountains were formed some 100 million years ago, during the same period and process as the Alps – through the buckling and uplifting/folding of the Eurasian plate with the African plate, and the uplifting of the what had once been the bed of a shallow, tropical sea, where shells and other marine life had been deposited in layers over millions of years. The area is heavily glaciated (although no glaciers remain here today), and glaciation occurred at a lower altitude than in the Alps further north – Lake Plav is the largest glacial lake in the Balkans, and a glacier in the Plav/Gusinje area is thought to have been around 35km long and up to 200m thick.