Strikingly beautiful yet vastly overlooked by hikers, Albania invites you to explore its pristine valleys and hamlets in the Accursed Mountains.
Highlights
- Removed from the mass tourism, the Accursed Mountains retain their pristine charm
- World-renowned long-distance hiking trail Peaks of the Balkans
- An unobscured experience of the pastoral life in the Balkans
- Savory local cuisine every step of the way
Albania Hiking Tours
Strikingly beautiful yet vastly overlooked by hikers, Albania invites you to explore its pristine valleys and hamlets in the Accursed Mountains.
Highlights
- Removed from the mass tourism, the Accursed Mountains retain their pristine charm
- World-renowned long-distance hiking trail Peaks of the Balkans
- An unobscured experience of the pastoral life in the Balkans
- Savory local cuisine every step of the way
Why Visit Albania on a Hiking Tour?
Albania sits where the Adriatic coast gives way to the wild spine of the Balkans, and its north is guarded by the Accursed Mountains — the range the wider world knows as the Albanian Alps. The name comes down from the shepherds who once crossed them; the reality is a wall of pale limestone peaks nudging 2,700 metres, split by deep green valleys that feel a century removed from the beaches a few hours south.
To walk here is to trade the polished trails of Western Europe for something far rawer. Paths climb through beech forest and open onto high pastures where horses still graze and stone kulla towers stand against the skyline. Above the treeline the rock turns bare and serrated, and the quiet is broken mostly by sheep bells and the wind pouring over the passes.
Snow holds those passes shut deep into June, which is why the walking here is a brief affair of high summer and early autumn rather than a season you can stretch.
The walk that wins most people over first is the Theth to Valbona crossing, a full day over a high saddle that links two of the most remote valleys left in Europe. You climb through the morning to a windswept col where the whole range suddenly opens out around you, then drop into Valbona's great amphitheatre of peaks — the kind of payoff that stays with you long after the boots come off.
For those who want the full sweep of it, the Peaks of the Balkans strings these valleys into an epic, wandering across Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo through some of the least-touched high country on the continent. Each day ends in a family-run guesthouse, where the door opens to a home-cooked dinner, a glass of rakia, and a welcome that has all but disappeared from busier mountains.
This is a land still being discovered on foot — glacial lakes, tucked-away waterfalls, villages reached only by trail. To hike through it now is to see the Balkans much as they have always been.
About Hiking in Albania
Albania gives you the Alps without the queues. The Accursed Mountains rise to nearly 2,700 metres barely three hours from the Adriatic, and the valleys beneath them still run on shepherding, haymaking and word of mouth.
You sleep in family guesthouses rather than institutional huts, eat what the household cooked that afternoon, and walk trails where a busy day means passing a dozen people. It is the closest thing left in Europe to the old ways of mountain travel.
Albania's headline walking is concentrated in the far north, where three trails carry almost all of it.
The Theth–Valbona crossing climbs over a 1,795 m pass between the two most remote valleys in the country — one long day, and the single walk most people come for.
The Peaks of the Balkans loops roughly 190 km through Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo over ten days, guesthouse to guesthouse.
Maja Jezercë (2,694 m) is the highest summit in the Dinaric Alps and a serious scramble above the Jezerca lakes.
The northern mountains have a short, reliable window from mid-June to early October. Snow can hold on the Valbona Pass into June, and guesthouses in Theth begin closing from mid-October.
July and August bring the warmest weather and the fullest guesthouses.
September is the local favourite — stable air, clear long views, the meadows going gold, and quiet paths.
Albania has no alpine-club hut system. Instead you stay in family guesthouses in Theth, Valbona and the villages along the way.
Meals are whatever the farm produced: sheep's cheese, cornbread, slow-cooked lamb, honey, and flija, the layered pancake that takes an afternoon to make.
July and August need booking well ahead.
Two national parks hold the best of the Albanian Alps, and a single pass connects them.
Theth is the western valley — the stone church, the kulla lock-in tower, the Blue Eye spring and the Grunas waterfall all within walking distance of the village.
Valbona is the eastern one, wider and wilder, a white riverbed running out beneath a horseshoe of limestone walls.
Between them sits the Valbona Pass, and above them the Jezerca lakes, tucked into a cirque most visitors never reach.
Almost every trip starts in Tirana, then runs north to Shkodër, the gateway town for the mountains. From there you either drive the road into Theth or take the Koman Lake ferry — a three-hour crossing through a flooded gorge that is a highlight in its own right.
If your route crosses into Montenegro or Kosovo, as the Peaks of the Balkans does, you need cross-border permits arranged in advance. They take a few weeks and passport details, so this is not a last-minute decision. The Peaks of the Balkans Trail guide on our sister site, Albania Hiking Tours, walks through them step by step.
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