*I'm no longer in Montenegro. This is an article that I intended for a climbing magazine, but it never got published. So I offer it here.
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| Leo on "Vertical Gardener" (7a+ (5.12a)) |
Our pre-climbing routine in Škaljari, Montenegro goes like this: put on harness, clip draws onto gear loops, get the rope out from the rope bag and settled at the base of the first pitch of the day, do some shoulder warm-ups and stretches, and take out the phone to send the local paranoid schizophrenic a text message:
Charlie. We’re up at the climbing area. Please don’t come and bother us.
You know, standard stuff.
* * *
The climbing scene in Montenegro is still relatively unknown. Even on his Balkan foray, Adam Ondra skipped over the country entirely. He went from the now well-known Drill and Chill festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina straight over to Albania, where impossibly long tufas awaited his banshee screams. I don’t know if he drove through Montenegro, but if he had I am sure that he looked around in awe; here is a country that is almost entirely composed of limestone mountains replete with canyons, caves, and new crags to develop for generations.
I have been living in the town of Tivat for two years now. My arrival brought the local climbing community numbers to three. By local, I don’t mean the town; I mean the entire country. Nobody climbs here. Those of us who do are foreigners—a Bosnian, a Turk, and me, the American. A few others dabble, but only on occasion. In a country known for its advent and subsequent victories in “The Lazy Olympics,” it should be no surprise that finding Montenegrins who are willing to put in full days at the crag are few and far between. Many of those who feigned interest in joining us find it hard just climbing out of bed before noon.
This dearth of climbers has left most of the potential crags untapped. There is only one primary area near the capital city of Podgorica, called Smokovac. It is the original and still most-developed area here. It is a kind of Frankenstein of development, bolted ad hoc over time by a variety of climbers passing through from various countries. On most days, its nearly seventy routes sit unclimbed, a ghost crag populated intermittently with itinerant passersby.
When I arrived to Montenegro, I was far from Smokovac. In search of a community and a place to spend free weekends and afternoons, I followed some cryptic Mountain Project beta to a large amphitheater of limestone just fifteen minutes from, and overlooking, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Kotor Bay. In 2005, some other wandering climbers—Austrians and, surprisingly, a few Montenegrins—bolted four routes there. The rest of the wall, which had room for a comfortable one-hundred routes, was left untouched. I didn’t find a community, but I did find a way to spend my free time.
I went to work, believing in an if-you-build-it-they-will-come kind of scenario. I theorized that what was keeping Montenegro back from growing its climbing community was simply a lack of infrastructure. If I could bolt this beautiful crag, with such convenient access for those around Kotor Bay, surely people would start coming out.
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| Lonely bolting. But what a view. |
That first winter of bolting what would become known as Škaljari (after the neighborhood it sits above) was long and lonely. Most days I went by myself and fixed ropes during various intensities of rainfall. Since the crag is primarily overhanging, many of the lines stay protected and dry. On days when the rain abated, I tirelessly cleaned and bolted the easier slabs and vertical faces, knowing that if a community would arise from this crag, they’d need to start on beginner routes.
The base of the crag was littered with the decaying carcasses of a variety of animals—goats, a fox, tiny and fragile bird skeletons, bleached turtle shells. There was a Saanen goat skull there with perfectly-preserved horns spiraling out of it like wrung towels. I hung the skull at the base of the wall and dubbed the still-unnamed sector “The Boneyard.”
In three months of going up to Škaljari on weekends with an old, borrowed Bosch, I put up twenty new routes. When they were finished, I reached out to the aforementioned dabblers in the area. They dabbled, as one would expect, but then faded away again, finding excuses that prioritized coffee at the ubiquitous seaside cafes over a day at the crag.
My salvation came eventually in the form of Austrians. Valentin Sattek, a psychology student from Vienna, got ahold of me about the development I had been doing. He said he was coming down and looking for crags that he could bolt.
When asked why he chose Montenegro, he said, “I saw a picture from Smokovac somewhere on the internet and got hyped. Then I started some Google research about climbing [there] and realized that there is not much climbing going on but probably lots of potential. I always had the idea in mind to start developing a really good remote area which is not on everybody's list. And it basically all worked out.”
He came over with a small group of friends and I was finally able to try out a few of the climbs I had bolted. I had an idea about how good the rock was, but to be there with the freedom of a belayer and the support of a psyched crew was pure bliss. We all joined up in doing the first ascents of some of the most tantalizing lines: “The Awesome Osim” (7a+), “Midnight Macabre” (7c+) and, eventually, the stunning “Oligarchs in Existential Crisis” (8a+).
But Valentin didn’t want to merely do FAs nor add bolts to an existing crag. He wanted to start a whole new area. After leaving me with a new 8a project whose crux turned out to be pronouncing the name—”Ich mach dich gesund, sagte der Bär”—he left for uncharted territory.
For Valentin the problem wasn’t finding new crags, it was choosing from the many obvious options. He asked for help from the other foreign climbers and they all told stories of undeveloped walls with easy access and room for hundreds of lines. He finally settled on two.
Ersin Bas, the Turk, told Valentin about a crag in the beachside port town of Bar. From there, you can see both an Orthodox church in the distance and towering minarets from a Mosque whose speakers call devotees to prayer. The crag also overlooks an old fortress and settlement whose history is as stratified as the limestone outcrops that surround it. First it was Roman, then Venetian, then Ottoman, then Austro-Hungarian, then Serbian, and now Montenegrin. The coincidence did not go unnoticed: here a Turk told an Austrian where to bolt lines for Montenegrins (in theory) to enjoy. The collision of worlds continues.
Valentin and his friend, Lukas Schmutzer, went for a closer look and were enthralled by the potential. They spent a week there and then returned the next season with Valentin’s girlfriend, his father, and another full crew of uber-psyched Austrians. They established a total of twenty routes and now Bar is one of the best difficult crags in the country.
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| Valentin getting the first ascent of one of his new routes in Bar. |
But Valentin confronted an oh-so-hard existential crisis of his own. He loved yet another untouched crag near Podgorica. In the idyllic Cijevna Canyon, following a cerulean river near the Albanian border, there was, again, enough rock for a lifetime’s worth of bolting. He had heard tales of this place from the other local, a Bosnian named Srdjan Lecic who has lived here ever since the war in the 90s, and from Kleman Becan, the Slovenian hardman who came through a few years ago and bolted two routes there. They all said the crags go for miles down the canyon. One need only park along the canyon road and choose a wall that looked good.
What is a motivated developer to do? Keep at the overhanging, thuggy routes in Bar? Or spend time developing the technical orange faces in Cijevna? Woe was Valentin.
His answer: develop both. Again a crew of drill-toting limestone aficionados came, and again they left the place with thirty-six routes ranging from 5s to 8s.
* * *
Meanwhile, back in Škaljari, I continued for a second winter of bolting. This time however, I was able to climb my routes right away. A colleague expressed interest in climbing the summer before and I took her out to give it a try. Ćina was one of those with whom climbing took hold right away. Before long, she was leading, projecting, and even did a first ascent of one of the lines I bolted. And what is perhaps even more surprising: she is a dyed-in-the-wool Montenegrin. We head out to the crag three to four times a week now, often with her prompting the decision. That is to say, she wouldn’t fair well in the Lazy Olympics.
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| Cina on "We Will (We Will) Rakija" (6c+ (5.11c)) |
It would have all been rosy had it not been for Charlie (a pseudonym). Kotor, though famed for its quaint Old Town and stunning bay, is also known as a haven for the mentally ill. The mismanaged local government and inept police force have done little to quell the conflicts caused by those afflicted with mental illness. Unfortunately, in going to the crag so often, we became embattled in one such conflict.
The heightened “activity” in Škaljari was noticed by a man who held strange delusions about the area. Charlie made claims that the land was his. We checked with the municipality, the neighbors, and with Charlie’s family—it’s not. They all verified that we had every right to climb there. They also explained that Charlie, infamous in the area, had some issues discerning fact from fiction. He also claimed that the goats in the area were his. One day he came up to the crag in a fury, yelling that we were eating the goats, which kept him from getting the milk that would cure his stomach ulcers. They were “holy animals,” he said, while making violent threats against us. He said we were killers, not only of his goats, but that our presence there was slowly eroding his and his family’s health, giving them tumors, stomach cancer, and heart palpitations.
I’ll admit, the goat skull that I had hung at the base of the wall didn’t help. Nor did the “Boneyard” moniker I had ascribed to it.
There is no doubt that Charlie is suffering more than us. But he pushed our limits too when he came to the crag on another day wielding an axe. His bad day became our bad day then. He took out a knife and cut the handlines we had set up between precipitous sections of the approach. He smashed the bolts that the lines were anchored to with the butt of his axe. And though he only yelled at us, and never put a hand on any of us, he left us there trembling with fear and rage.
But this story has a happy ending...sort of.
After countless months of dealing with his threats and tirades, we finally went to the police, Charlie in tow. As expected, the officers were useless, doing nothing more than competing with him in one shouting match after another. However, upon leaving the station, Charlie gave us a glimpse of hope.
On the side of the street, after another diatribe about god knows what, Charlie was graced with a moment of lucidity. “Why don’t you two just send me a text message when you go up there. You can say, ‘Charlie, we are up in Škaljari climbing. Please don’t bother us.’ And I won’t.”
We were flabbergasted. Nearly at our wits end, he gave us this clear and easy solution.
* * *
Today Škaljari has a total of forty routes. Last winter it did not rain much, and temps were perfect for projecting and sending. Ćina ascended the grades bit by bit, and I finally got back into a consistent climbing routine.
Charlie, for the most part, has kept good on his word. Though to approach, you still have to step over signs he stole and posted that say “Private Property”, and then walk past a rusty barrel painted in blood-red with the words “No Pass Zone.” But other than that minor detail, Škaljari has become a legitimate climbing area.
Few Montenegrins have come out to climb there. But the greater international climbing community has begun to notice it. We have come across Croatians, Germans, Norwegians, and French, among others, on days when we went up expecting, as usual, to be alone.
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| Me on the first ascent of the aptly named "Lunatic Enthusiasm" (8b (5.13d)). |
When one German came through, he said, “This is great. You have so many options. We could go to Škaljari, or Smokovac, or Bar, or Cijevna. You could do a whole climbing trip just in Montenegro.” Two years ago, that wouldn’t have been the case.
I’m leaving this year. Off to my next job in Colombia. But Valentin is still motivated and has already made plans to keep returning every fall and every spring. His friends have put up pictures and videos on social media and interest is percolating around Europe. Now with locals like Ćina and Srdjan at the helm, Montenegro’s nascent climbing scene also has a pulse. Hell, even Charlie has given some support. His last text message back to us said:
Ok. Be careful, buddy. Have fun.
