This beautiful hike in Shar Mountain National Park from the village Veshala to the Karanikolicho Ezero (also knows as Karanikola Lake) is 15 km in length with 1150 m ascent.
It was the best hike we did in 2026, not least because we were lucky enough to spot a bear! In 2025 we spotted our first bear ever, with two cubs, during a hike to the Bogovinje Lake, also in Shar National Park. They were gone before I could take a picture. That event was in fact the reason why we came back to Shar NP: Hoping to see another bear in what is arguably Macedonia’s nicest national park. And we succeeded!
The hike starts just before the village Veshala, where there is a good parking spot next to a spring. Already at the start the view of the mountains is great.
The hike starts with a steep climb on asphalt, that is quickly replaced by a 4×4 mountain road. Somebody was working on broadening the dirt road with an excavator, allegedly to build weekend houses in the park. Let’s hope they don’t ruin this part of the national park with those activities too much…
Luckily, after a while the dirt road becomes a smaller and more interesting hiking trail.
There still were patches of snow when we did this hike in the beginning of June. When we got closer to the lake, we needed to make a few small detours compared to the official trail, because of these snow patches.
We saw the bear about 6 km into the hike. We were well prepared and had bear spray with us. It is probably not necessary to carry this in Macedonia since the bears “usually” will move away from humans. But having the bear spray adds some extra safety, just in case.
The last part to the lake is quite a steep climb again.
The lake itself was stunning, with the surrounding mountains still partly covered with snow. We had a good break at the lake, occasionally looking over our shoulder to make sure the bear had not followed us 😊
I added a little off-trail trip to the Small Karanikolichko Lake that is located a bit higher than the main lake.
We took a slightly different way back on our return but soon caught up with the main trail again.
At a certain moment, just before the waypoint where we had to cross the river, we spotted a herd of sheep with dogs. We decided to keep our distance and continued on our side of the river with a little detour (so cross the river and keep following the official trail here!). Once we thought we were far enough from the dogs, we crossed the river and joined the trail again. Unfortunately, one of the dogs had spotted us and came running towards us. Always a scary moment. It turned out to be a very friendly dog that wanted to play! Well, that’s for a different experience with a sheepdog than the nerve-wracking ones we usually have haha!
This clearly was an amazing hike that gets 5 out of 5 stars.
Note that for hiking in Shar Mountain National Park you need to register yourself. You need to buy a ticket to enter certain zones by car. See here and their website for the most-up-to-date info: https://www.sarmountain.org.mk/
You can view and download the GPS track of this hike here: https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/veshala-to-karanikolichko-lake-in-shar-mountain-national-park-273323718
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