Black Lake (Durmitor) — lake
Ingo Mehling · CC BY-SA 4.0

Black Lake (Durmitor)

  • Elevation1,416 m
  • 1 min read
  • 43.143° N 19.087° E

Interesting facts

  • According to a legend recorded by the ethnographer Pavle Rovinski, Saint Sava cursed a greedy monastery here, and a bottomless, fishless lake swallowed it.
  • The lake's level can vary by up to 5 metres over the year, and in drought the Little Lake drops so low that a waterfall forms between the two basins.
  • Water seeping out of the lake travels underground to springs in the valleys of the Tara and the Komarnica, far below.
  • The lake was carved during the Pleistocene, when glaciers reshaped a karst valley and its sinkholes into a basin that filled with water.
  • The lake usually stays frozen for about 70 days each winter.
  • In summer the water is typically around 4 °C colder than the air above it.
  • The lake is fed by the Celina spring and the Mlinski stream, which rises below the smaller Zmijinje Lake.

Why it is worth it

Black Lake — Crno jezero — lies at the foot of the Durmitor massif in northern Montenegro, a dark, forest-fringed mirror at 1,416 metres with the bulk of Međed peak rising directly above it. It is the largest and best known of the eighteen glacial lakes of Durmitor, which local people call "mountain eyes".

The lake is in fact two lakes joined together: the Big Lake and the Little Lake, linked by a narrow strait that dries out in summer. Together they cover just over half a square kilometre. The smaller basin is the deeper of the two, reaching about 49 metres, while the larger one is about 24.5 metres deep. The lakes behave unusually: in summer the water flows from the Big Lake into the Little Lake, while in winter the flow runs in the opposite direction. A path of about 3.5 kilometres leads around the whole shore.

Durmitor itself is a massif of the Dinaric Alps with 48 peaks above 2,000 metres, the highest being Bobotov Kuk at 2,523 metres, and its edge is cut by the Tara River canyon, around 1,300 metres deep. Protected as a national park since 1952, the area was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1980. The lake is only about 3 km from the centre of Žabljak, the mountain town that serves as the base for the region.

Getting there

Black Lake is about 3 km from Žabljak in Durmitor National Park. The nearest larger town is Pljevlja, about 32 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Podgorica Airport (TGD), about 88 km away in a straight line; the road from Podgorica through the mountains is considerably longer.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

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From the encyclopaedia

Black Lake is a lake in the Municipality of Žabljak in northern Montenegro. It is a glacial lake, located on Mount Durmitor, at an elevation of 1,416 m. It is 3 km from the town of Žabljak.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

43.14333, 19.08750per Wikidata