It is only 3 km and 250 ascent from the churches dedicated to St Nikola and St Peter and Paul at the entrance of the village Tresonce (Tresonche) to the Alilica Cave. Tresonce and the cave are part of Mavrovo National Park.
However, in 2016 it took us quite some blood, sweat and tears to find the cave, since we initially did not walk far enough and were looking at the wrong spot for the cave. Good news for you: with the GPS track I made you can’t go wrong!
It is a pleasant walk next to the Tresonce River (Tresonecka Reka).
Along the way to the Alilica Cave, you pass a small hydroelectric power plant, a spring after about 1.5 km, and a waterfall/spring called Obesen Izvor (Hanging Spring) on the other side of the river after 2.5 km. There’s also a wooden cabin with tools at this point.
At some places the path is pretty much overgrown and there were several broken trees blocking the road.
Retrospectively, the cave was very easy to find, as there is a big wooden picnic table in front of it.
Besides the Alilica cave, there are two other smaller caves. The first cave is just downstream of Alilica Cave, and a other a bit further upstream of Alilica Cave, all on the same side of the river. In both these caves there were several animal bones. I also spotted a lonely bat. Some of the bones were really large and I secretly hoped they would be fossils from the extinct cave bear! I contacted the Natural History Museum in Skopje and posted a question on the fossilforum.com, and there seemed to be consensus that the bones must have belonged to a horse. See here for pictures of the bones and the opinion of the experts: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/68802-what-kind-of-bones-are-these/
Further upstream there’s a waterfall called Biljana Waterfall 2. Since it was late in the summer and the river was not very deep, it was possible to approach the waterfall pretty close using some stones in the river. This is a pleasant walk and the caves were cool so this trip gets 4 out of 5 stars.
For hiking in Mavrovo NP you need to register and buy a ticket. Tickets can be obtained online (https://npmavrovo.mk/tickets) or at the information center just outside of Mavrovi Anovi.
You can view and download the GPS track of this hike here: https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/alilica-cave-and-biljana-waterfall-near-tresonce-in-mavrovo-national-park-14897906
On the map below the caves are indicated with the red circles.
Another nice cave in the neighborhood is the Kalina cave. We did a hike from Tresonce to Lazaropole (15 km) that passes the Kalina cave.
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