Is Croatia a cross-country skiing paradise? Almost!
John Clayton is a UK citizen who has been living in the coastal city of Rijeka for 15 years. Following on from his previous post about Croatia: cycling heaven, and also cycling hell, in his latest post here, John talks about something you may now consider about Croatia – cross-country skiing!
I’ve just discovered the perfect winter activity for Croatia. I’m just not quite sure what it is called: Nordic ski touring? off-track cross-country skiing? Backcountry cross-country skiing? All are used but none quite have the right ring. Whatever the name is it, the mountains in Croatia are perfect for it.
Maybe it’s easier to describe than name, making your own cross-country ski trails to explore the mountains. This is very common in Nordic countries and in parts of the US but rare elsewhere. However, it turns out I have the perfect terrain on my doorstep. Gorski Kotar is the mountainous region just northwest of Rijeka, bordering Slovenia. It is almost entirely forested and when the snow falls the forestry trails transform into a perfect, picturesque network of snowy tracks just waiting to be skied.
We discovered this niche type of skiing almost by accident. A couple of times a year we would go cross-country skiing in Slovenia using rented gear. It was certainly fun but the equipment was never very good and the boots always hurt. So we bought cheap sets of traditional track cross-country skis, aiming just to have something cheap but better than worn-out rental equipment. Once we had the equipment of course we wanted to use it. So whenever there was enough snow, we’d find ourselves making our own tracks up at Platak – the main ski “resort” in Croatia. We made many excellent trips but clearly our equipment wasn’t ideal so last year we invested in wider skis, stiffer boots and binding, and touring poles with wider baskets. It has proved to be a great decision as it has opened up so many new amazing winter adventures in the mountains.
Over Christmas this year we explored the forest around Begovo Razdolje, the highest village in Croatia, near Mrkopalj. We had two beautiful sunny days, skiing our way up into new areas with trails forking off at every turn, all waiting to be explored another day. Other than a handful of hikers on snowshoers in the distance, we had the mountains to ourselves. Ourselves and the bears to be precise, both days we came across fresh bear tracks – shouldn’t they be hibernating?
Transport to skiing and cross-country skiing locations in Croatia
Unfortunately, there is no public transportation to Begovo Razdolje so we had to hire a car, which luckily is remarkably cheap here in winter. More conveniently there is a public bus to Platak from Rijeka on weekends. Platak is the most popular ski area in Croatia and is just 35km from Rijeka. We recently had another fabulous snowy day exploring the trails in this area, and as usual, the more we explored the more potential we found for future trips. The weather was great in the morning but the snow forecast for the afternoon turned out to be rain, so we retreated to “Mali Dom” at Platak to dry out and to be revived by hot wine.
More surprisingly for Croatia, we even managed to go skiing by train. The trains in coastal Croatia are notoriously bad so rarely useful for leisure purposes. I like to think that we might even be the first people ever to ski by train in Croatia. We took the early afternoon train from Rijeka to Vrata, just a few minutes past Fužine, and headed up the slopes of Bitoraj mountain. We turned back just in time to catch the train back at 5pm. It was only a two-hour ski trip but a truly remarkable one, boarding the train in Rijeka in ski boots and being back home within four hours having skied in Gorski Kotar. All for less than €5 each!
Of course, Croatia, famous as a hot summer destination, does not have reliable snow and like everywhere else is affected by climate change. As I write this, the mountains are almost bare of snow. Three days of rain cleared the snow completely and the few flakes that fell yesterday look pretty but are nowhere near enough to ski on. Now we have to be patient and hope for more snow while appreciating that we had such an excellent Christmas.
I’d love to be able to propose Croatia for a cross-country skiing holiday but it’s just not realistic. It really can be truly incredible but luck plays too much of a role when planning any snow sport here. You need to be nearby and waiting. However for anyone in the region when the snow does fall, the opportunities are as good as anywhere in the world. Maybe there should be a name for this combination of skiing, patience and luck, Gorski Hrvatskiing? No, perhaps not.
On a practical note, we are now using 80mm backcountry cross-country skis with backcountry “BC” NNN boots and bindings. This set-up is perfect. However, there is plenty of fun to be had on traditional track ski gear. The narrow pole baskets sinking into fresh snow is probably the biggest frustration.
I’ve uploaded most of the routes we’ve done onto Wikiloc if anyone is interested. My username is Safatempo – see Safatempo’s trails and waypoints | Wikiloc : wikiloc.com.
Thank you once again, John, for such an informative and in-depth post, with some gorgeous photos too! Hopefully, this will inspire readers to give cross-country skiing in Croatia a go!
