Summiting the Red Plank

Saturday, September 24, 2022
Žabljak, Žabljak Municipality, Montenegro
Supposed to meet Nemanja and Yulia around 9:00 or 9:30 for breakfast. We sent a note that we were going to breakfast at 9:00. Got a note back that they would come at 9:30. Have to say, we’ve had better breakfast buffets and we have never had a good cup of coffee from those type of machines. We tried cappuccino, long shots, short shots and they are always bad. Breakfast included fried eggs, pre-made omelets, weird fatty bacon, dried meats, tomatoes, cheeses and pastries. You can do alright, but not great.
Nemanja and Yulia showed up around 9:45— not thinking good thoughts about them. They had an abbreviated breakfast and we went outside to discuss our hike. Nemanja showed us the imposing Red Plank Mountain and asked if we wanted to get there from the town or drive up to a village and start from there. Sue was thinking drive, but Dave said, “we can do 12+ miles”. We headed up a path from town and went through the forest on a rocky/rooted trail. When we got to the infamous Black Lake, there was a restaurant, benches, row boats, etc. It is a beautiful area. Again, we were shown the Red Plank Mountain that we would summit. Nemanja is a fast hiker and the trails, unlike the U.S., are straight up rather than switchbacks. We were sweating profusely but were keeping up and enjoying the scenery. We took a short break at an intersection and then took the route to the Red Plank. It was all good until we broke out into the rocky alpine and started to scamper over boulders that were on the edge of the mountain. After a couple of really sketchy sections where we both thought were dangerous, we turned back. The views were phenomenal already and Nemanja could not really tell us how many more “death defining” moments we would encounter. The hike was spectacular and the return was special because a colleague of Nemanja’s was doing some gardening on his small farm and we stopped to chat with him. The views of Zabljak from above were spectacular.  Getting back to Black Lake, we thought we were done with the uphill, but not true, we had another tough mile ahead of us!  We returned to the hotel and agreed to meet for dinner at 8:00. There was some discussion by the legitimacy of Nemanja and Yulia joining us for dinner. It all got worked out. Three of us had the lamb and one had risotto with lamb. We also tried the amazing peach rakija (brandy) and shared a bottle of local red wine. We didn't finish the wine so the waitress offered us wine glasses for the room and later gave us fancy glasses we could keep. Really special day with extraordinary people. We made a plan for hiking at 9:00am the next day to beat the rain, which was forecast to start at 2:00pm. 
Finished our wine in our room using our new, fancy glasses -- tasted much better!

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