Visit-Montenegro.com: “Schmidt” grinds what snowboarders drift

Prutas on Durmitor – His eyes don’t move! That’s what locals from Durmitor say when brain does not pick up, in a short-time interval, millions of signs of delight of what one has just seen.
That’s why the recordings made with cameras and photo cameras on Prutas by reporters from TV and independent daily press “Vijesti” two days ago – are priceless.

In the curves below marvelous peak, road-workers are fighting snow drifts up to 8 meters high, while nature and winter sports lovers are sledding, boarding, and collecting bouquets of fluorescent mountain flowers…

Snowdrifts are still blocking the regional roads across Durmitor, from Pluzine, across Pisce, to Zabljak, and the road-menders Mijat Kankaras and Rade Silajdzic believe that they will clean the route in 10 days. Mijat, joking, says that, he and “Schmidt”, a special machine made for cleaning snowdrifts, are altogether eighty years old, but, they won’t give up.

“We are facing a lot of challenges in Dobra vale, across the Saddle and near Stozine. We finish works around this time every year, it has been like that for 15 years now”, Kankaras told us.

When we asked him if he was some kind of a well-known character in Piva and in Zabljak, he replied briefly: “What a character, I’m just a simple worker”.

There is another 15km of snowdrifts ahead of Mijat and Rade to reach Zabljak.

Cameraman Vladan Ceranic was setting his camera for hours in order to record the sunrise over Prutas, a spectacular peak, with vertically laid rocks and green areas.

“While we are throwing snowballs, only three hours drive from here people are bathing, but they just like us have to put on cream, in order not to burn”, reporter of TV “Vijesti” Darko Bulatovic says, while his face is already becoming red.

Pluzine-based travel agency “Free in Green” (www.krstarenje-ingreen.com), specialized for cruises around Piva Lake, organized for the reporters a daily tour to Durmitor for work and recreation.

Co-owner of the agency, Mikica Blagojevic, invited all nature lovers to enjoy the place at only 20km from Pluzine.

“The weather is beautiful, but there aren’t many nature lovers. The flowers on the hill lawns have bright colors, and the snow is all around, there are beautiful terrains for sledging… This is not far, but just a few people know that the roads are asphalted here”, Blagojevic said.

While there is still snow on Durmitor, the agency organizes trips including sledging, and in the afternoon cruising around Piva Lake.

The road across Prutas, Todor’s and Dobra vale and the Saddle has been asphalted last year, and the works have been financed by EPCG. The route between Pluzine and Zabljak is passable across Nedajni, the canyon of Susice and Mala Crna Gora, but across canyon there is still macadam road.

Our Prutas

In order to survive on Prutas in the old days, you would have needed only sauerkraut and cloth socks. Today, according to the mountaineers, there are two rules in effect: the first rule – at 1.500 meters above sea level you don’t use formal talks and the second – three plus three isn’t always six.

“Be good-willed and non-profit, and apart from your head bring one board for sliding down the snow and let the adventure begin! You will pass the last remaining snow drifts of Prutas, across colorful pastures down the emerald Piva lake. Should we even mention fresh air and the cleanest water…Thus, by passing all three states of matters, you will enter the fourth dimension – the adventure which you may experience only in nature,” it is said in the statement of the Center for Piva’s Development on the occasion of founding a volunteer extreme sports club “Nas Prutas” (Our Prutas).

By S.B.