Kopaonik

Kopaonik's name means digging mountain, and that is its history in one word: Saxon miners were working silver, iron and lead here by the thirteenth century, the medieval Serbian state minted its wealth from these ores, and the summit plateau is still called Suvo Rudište — the dry mine-field. The geology that paid the miners is the park's scientific claim too: the massif is a collision zone of granites, serpentines, andesites and schists, cooked through by volcanic heat, and its residual warmth surfaces around the mountain's base in a ring of spas — at Jošanička Banja the water comes out of the ground at 78°C, among the hottest springs in the country.

The park, declared in 1981 and set at 11,969 hectares by the 2015 law, covers the high plateau and its radiating valleys. The climate is the mountain's paradox: nearly two hundred sunny days a year — "the mountain of sun" is the tourist board's line, but the number is real — combined with snow that lies from November to May. That combination is why Kopaonik carries Serbia's largest ski resort inside a national park, lifts and hotels concentrated on Suvo Rudište and Pančićev vrh's flanks, and the friction between the resort and the reserve is the permanent fact of the place. Away from the pistes, the park protects spruce forest to the treeline, subalpine meadows that hold two plants growing nowhere else on Earth — the Kopaonik houseleek and the Kopaonik violet — and strict reserves like Kozje stene above the Samokovska river's gorge.

The summit itself is the strangest ensemble in Serbian mountaineering. Pančićev vrh, 2,017 metres, is named for Josif Pančić, the botanist who described the flora of Serbia and the endemic spruce of Tara; his remains were moved up here in 1951 into a purpose-built stone mausoleum, fulfilling his wish to lie on the mountain he called the most beautiful in Serbia. Beside the tomb stands a white radar dome — the peak hosts a military and air-traffic installation — so the father of Serbian botany shares his summit with surveillance equipment, and visitors walk up between the two.

What's worth knowing before you go

The resort centre on Suvo Rudište is the practical base year-round, reached by road from Jošanička Banja or Brus; since the gondola from Brzeće opened, the eastern village is the quieter way up. Winter is the resort's season and the trails vanish under the pistes; for the park rather than the skiing, come June to September, when the lifts run for walkers and the meadows are in flower. The walk to Pančićev vrh from the centre is short and the summit ensemble — mausoleum, radome, view to Kosovo's mountains — is worth the mild oddness.

Two details reward attention. The endemic houseleek grows on serpentine outcrops, not in the ski zone — the Metođe area on the Brzeće side is the classic ground. And the spas that ring the mountain are the old Kopaonik: Jošanička Banja's scalding water and faded Ottoman-era bathhouse make a good half-day when the weather closes in on the tops.