Via Dinarica White Trail

I've hiked the Via Dinarica white trail during 5 weeks (late june to early august 2019), from Krivi Put in Croatia (as advised by Eva) and stopped due to time schedule after Prenj (Bosnia-i-Herzegovina). TLDR: I loved it! I am a 35yo french guy travelling alone. I have never felt unsafe on this trip. I have seen no bear, no wolf, only 1 or 2 poskok, 2 or 3 thicks. The main dangers were: - lack of water: every shelter had water. else if you spot a ruin, they generally have an old water reservoir (not indicated on the map), finally you can ask people living in the area. Be aware that in summer the springs located on the map are generally dry!! Rule of thumb: have a filter and a 6 meters light rope, and be ready to carry up to 3 liters some days. - heatstroke: in the worst cases I had to stop hiking at noon and resume at 6pm - wind: the 'bora' can be nasty - getting lost: you can't hike the Via Dinarica without a good GPS (a tough phone with GPS and Glonass worked for me) because you will often get lost (e.g overgrown paths that are not visible anymore) During my hike I've met only 4 Via Dinarica hikers. Two going south: a german guy, a friendly retired man from USA, and 2 going north from Albania: an australian guy, a 20yo young czech woman. Nobody seemed traumatized like Vladimir (see previous comment), they were enjoying. Via Dinarica is not easy, it is adventure, far from tourist areas, and this is exactly what I loved. Landscapes have been gorgeous, every one I've met has been super friendly and most of the time with a perfect english! I loved the feeling in the quiet remote villages, out-of-time, self-sufficient, so peaceful. The only thing I really disliked (and this was shared among the other hikers) is that some section include a looooot of hiking on road... which is so boring even if the surroundings are beautiful. (South bound) My advice is to hike the croatian section from Krivi Put to Gračac (it includes Velebit, Paklenica), then take public transports and resume hiking around Mrkodol/Bukovica in BiH. Cheers! :-) (instagram: sulpeb)

Hello dear hiking friends! Since a few days I'm back from my Via Dinarica tour. I agree totally with Bernat Robert. To anticipate: this way is NOT (!!!) in reality. The paths are either not available (I do not want to speak of signage) or so overgrown that a normal hiking is not possible. So PLEASE, PLEASE do NOT want to go this way - it just does NOT exist. I am a very experienced and very persistent walker and had my own difficulties with a GPS device (Garmin etrex 30x). Not infrequently, I felt lost. Yes, also with GPS device! The GPS route provided by some websites is NOT really !!! existent. I loaded the gpx file to my Garmin etrex 30x and had to realize on the first day that this is just a route created on the PC. No one has hiked in recent years. It may be that there were (some) these ways once, but today (in August 2019) just not anymore. I also did everything as video material as evidence. Who says anything else does not mean this trail. One can not imagine how disappointed and above all angry at the makers of this tour was / am. The trails are nonexistent. Here is advertised for something that does NOT exist. Imagine that hikers from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the US ... get there, and realize on the first day that there is no such way. I do not want to imagine their disappointment not to speak of other emotions. These countries do not!? know hikers. They confuse hiker with immigrants. And immigrants consider them criminals. I was treated so permanently, even though I speak the local language. It sounds unbelievable, but I had to cancel my tour because I feared for my safety. TOTALLY NOT RECOMMENDED!!! Yours sincerely, Vladimir Mandić

I hiked approx 1/2 of the trail and I would not recommend hiking the whole trail as it's not maintained. Calling this a trail is possible probably only in Balkans. Slovenian part is no sense, a lot of dirt road. Croatian part.. I don't know where to start. It was an ice storm in Gorski kotar a couple of years ago and the existing "trail" is covered with fallen trees. Then a lot of dirt road, bush walking... You get an impression that nobody hiked there for ages. At the end of Velebit the trail stops (even thought you would thing, according to the gpx, that it continues to Gračac) due to landmines. Than Bosnian Prenj and Čvrsnica, again a lot of dirt road, some extremely steep paths that were unblocked only for the via Dinarica. So my advice, don't try to follow the trail; rathere choose some parts like Velebit, Dinara, Biokovo,Prenj, Čvrsnica, Maglić, Prokletije... You would barely find a mark that you are on via Dinarica indeed. Concluding, this is not a trail.