AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Lake Plav (Plavsko jezero) is the largest glacial lake in Montenegro and one of the most striking in the Balkans, resting at about 906–907 metres in the broad Plav–Gusinje basin between the Prokletije (Albanian Alps) and the Visitor massif in the country's far northeast. Its roughly elliptical, two-square-kilometre surface mirrors the snow-streaked peaks that surround it, making it both a scenic showcase and the practical heart of outdoor activity in the Plav region.↗↗
It is a lake you can actually get into and around: swimmers use the warmed summer water, paddlers rent pedal boats, kayaks and small boats, and anglers rate it a fly-fishing paradise, while hikers and mountain bikers ring the basin and push out toward higher glacial tarns. In winter, when the surface freezes solid, locals and visitors walk and skate across the ice.↗↗↗
Born from the ice
Lake Plav was left behind by the last great glaciation. It formed at the close of the Würm phase, when melting waters pooled in the deep Plav–Gusinje trough carved by what was the longest Pleistocene glacier in Montenegro, some 35 km in length, sweeping down from the cirques of the Prokletije. The lake you see today is a shrunken remnant of that larger, deeper ice-age pond, still being slowly filled in by sediment carried in by the River Ljuča.
