Klek Mountain

The unmistakable silhouette of Klek — a 1,182-metre limestone monolith shaped uncannily like a sleeping giant — dominates the eastern gateway to Gorski Kotar and has been the subject of Croatian folk myth for over a thousand years. Local legend says the mountain is a petrified giant killed by lightning, and witches were said to gather on its summit on Walpurgis Night (30 April), a story so persistent that even today Croatian mountaineers celebrate an official 'Klek Witches' Sabbath' on that date with bonfires and mulled wine at the summit. The hike from the village of Bjelsko at the mountain's foot takes 2.5 hours up a steep but well-marked trail through beech forest, ending with an exposed final scramble to the summit cross (basic climbing scrambling; not for anyone afraid of heights). The reward is one of the finest panoramas in inland Croatia: on clear days visible to the Julian Alps, Kvarner Bay, and half of Bosnia. The mountain shelters the impressive Klek mountain hut just below the summit, one of the oldest in Croatia (built 1892). Beloved by generations of Croatian climbers as the country's first serious climbing school in the interwar years.