Dajti Mountain Trail
Trail photos
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 5.8 mi
- Elevation gain
- 1,394 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Easy
- Elevation loss
- 620 ft
- Max elevation
- 3,665 ft
- TrailRank
-
52
5
- Min elevation
- 2,577 ft
- Trail type
- One Way
- Time
- 3 hours 15 minutes
- Coordinates
- 497
- Uploaded
- January 12, 2014
- Recorded
- January 2014
near Mish, Tiranë (Albania)
Viewed 13224 times, downloaded 247 times
Trail photos
Itinerary description
Dajti Balcony is rightfully a top excursion from Tirana. At roughly 1000 Meter, it offers grandiose views across the sprawling city, and on to the Adriatic. It can be reached in many ways - by car, by cable car, or you can walk from Linza or Tujan village. The summit of Dajti can be easily reached from the balcony. Perhaps not so widely known is the Dajti Mountain Trail (Dajti MT), which explores the backside (eastern side) of the mountain.
The Dajti MT was originally designed as a trail also to be used by vehicles - possibly to provide an escape for the VIPs hiding in the military base on the plateau, just in case. The trail is now only used by people and mules. If "mulepath" sounds boring to you, think again. The path is carved into the - sometimes almost vertical - rockface of Dajti, and while there is no real risk to the hiker it passes some sheer drops. The views are dramatic.
With just under 10 kilometers in length, the trail is not particularly strenuous, as long as you manage the logistics of reaching the trailhead at Qafe Molle. We used two cars, positioning one near the mountain station of the cable car, which is the end of the hike. Alternatively, you may use a furgon (minibus) to reach the trailhead, or make other transport arrangements. If you don't have to pick up your own car at the trailhead, you can use the cable car down to Tirana.
According to the owner of Bar Luli at the Qafe Molle trailhead, furgons to Qafe Molle and beyond leave from Kinostudio in Tirana daily at 7 am. You are advised to be at the bus station at 6:30 am. The furgon station is next to the Bar Kinostudio at the Kinostudio's Alp Petrol station. The driver of the furgon is Sami Balla. There is no scheduled return bus from Qafe Molle in the afternoon. You may however walk from Qafe Molle to Qafe Priske, to catch the last bus coming from Shengjergj to Tirana at 4 pm. To avoid the risk of getting stuck, we recommend to start the hike at Qafe Molle.
We rated the hike as generally easy. While the trail is - in most places - fairly wide, be aware of some unsecured steep drops. These make the trail unsuitable for small children.
The Dajti MT was originally designed as a trail also to be used by vehicles - possibly to provide an escape for the VIPs hiding in the military base on the plateau, just in case. The trail is now only used by people and mules. If "mulepath" sounds boring to you, think again. The path is carved into the - sometimes almost vertical - rockface of Dajti, and while there is no real risk to the hiker it passes some sheer drops. The views are dramatic.
With just under 10 kilometers in length, the trail is not particularly strenuous, as long as you manage the logistics of reaching the trailhead at Qafe Molle. We used two cars, positioning one near the mountain station of the cable car, which is the end of the hike. Alternatively, you may use a furgon (minibus) to reach the trailhead, or make other transport arrangements. If you don't have to pick up your own car at the trailhead, you can use the cable car down to Tirana.
According to the owner of Bar Luli at the Qafe Molle trailhead, furgons to Qafe Molle and beyond leave from Kinostudio in Tirana daily at 7 am. You are advised to be at the bus station at 6:30 am. The furgon station is next to the Bar Kinostudio at the Kinostudio's Alp Petrol station. The driver of the furgon is Sami Balla. There is no scheduled return bus from Qafe Molle in the afternoon. You may however walk from Qafe Molle to Qafe Priske, to catch the last bus coming from Shengjergj to Tirana at 4 pm. To avoid the risk of getting stuck, we recommend to start the hike at Qafe Molle.
We rated the hike as generally easy. While the trail is - in most places - fairly wide, be aware of some unsecured steep drops. These make the trail unsuitable for small children.
Waypoints
Provisioning
2,644 ft
01-Restaurant
11-JAN-14 10:50:22
Waypoint
2,946 ft
02-Pasture
11-JAN-14 11:36:56
Waypoint
2,815 ft
03-End of driveability
11-JAN-14 12:15:36
Intersection
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Information
Easy to follow
Scenery
Easy
We did this trail in mid-February, while there was still a little bit of Snow on the the surrounding mountains and extended it a bit to do it without any dependancy on public transport or taxis.
We parked the car at Qafa e Priskes and walkt the SH54 towards the starting point of this route. According to Google Maps it adds about an hour to the overall time (we think we were a bit faster). It's an easy walk along a tarmac road without much traffic.
Once at the trailhead, we followed the trail described here without any problems, through a little bit of snow enjoying the wonderful views of the valley and mountain ranges behind Dajti.
Once at the station of the cable car, we decided to close the gap towards our car on foot and started walking along the road leading down from Dajti (SH47). We shorted the trip a little by hitchiking one of the Restaurant shuttles, thereby skipping about 2km of asphalt road. The final stretch down towards the entrance of Dajti Park and back up SH54 to Qafa e Priskes and our car was about another 2 hours of walking. It does take some motivation to do this, but the views of both the Dajti ridge in the setting sun as well as the views over Tirana are quite nice. And we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset, when we reached our starting point again (with traffic not being a problem at this time of the day along this route).
Well worth the trip, of you ever want to add walking all around Dajti Mountain to your list. All in all, it took us about 5 hours and it was never really difficult, but worth all the views.