HITTING THE HEIGHTS When disaster strikes in the mountains of Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia, help will always Words: Kaziyoshi Sasazaki Pictures: Jeep
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f someone were to ask you to name Europe’s most popular regions for mountaineering, you’d almost certainly come back with the Alps or the Pyrenees. You might try to be clever and say something about Scotland or the Peak District, or maybe the Black Forest, but the smart money is on leading with your banker. As they might remind you on the BBC, however, other mountain ranges are available. You’ll be aware of the Tatras and the Urals, those ones in Poland and possibly something going on down the middle of Italy. But would you think about the Kamnik, Julian, Dinaric and Carpathian mountains?
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These are among the ranges which every year attract thousands of visitors to the wild places of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. In Croatia alone (the only one of the three that doesn’t have a peak above 2000 metres), the total number of visits to its mountainous regions equates to 600,000 days of hiking per year. And where you get mountaineering, you get mountain mishaps. Still in Croatia, the nation’s peaks are watched over by a rescue association of some 700 volunteers. As an illustration of how valuable their services are, they attend 7000 callouts every year. Mostly in summer, but human error (and natural disasters) can strike all year round.
Some of these volunteers have been doing it for as long as a quarter of a century. But in 2013, they were joined by a new team member – the Dacia Duster. Following a tie-up with Dacia, the three nations’ mountain rescue associations took delivery of around 20 Dusters each. Naturally, these are all-wheel drive models – whose tractability and ground clearance has made them an invaluable asset in the rugged terrain and harsh conditions of the mountains. Used as rapid response vehicles, the Dusters typically carry teams of three rescuers along with all their equipment and, if necessary, search dogs to the scene of an accident.
Most often, this requires specialists including mountaineering, caving, diving and rock climbing experts to reach wild, remote locations – often in the sort of harsh weather that gets people into difficulties in the first place. In Serbia, for example, a nationwide team of around 500 volunteers is called out around 1500 times a year. This has resulted in the Dusters being used every single day for the last eight years, to tow trailers full of rescue equipment and transport rescuers and search dogs to the most remote parts of the country – something Dacia says they’ve done without ever registering a single failure.
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