The MOJO Family: Skiing at Jahorina, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Our family of four was really keen to go skiing while we were in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we heard that Jahorina was the best resort in the area.

But planning a ski trip to this resort as a part of a year long backpacking / remote working trip was not an easy task! There wasn't a lot of information available online, or at least not that we could access in English, to help us with the logistics.

Jahorina resort hosted several of the events of the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, including women's alpine. It's about an hour's drive from Sarajevo. It would be possible to stay in the city and do a day trip up, ski for the day, and come back down. But we chose to go up and spend 4 nights at the resort, hoping we could have 3 solid ski days and enjoy hanging out in the mountains.

Transport

Options to get there include: (a) finding the group shuttle that drives up every morning and comes back every afternoon, (b) taking a taxi up and back, or (c) renting a car and driving yourself. We ended up getting a taxi up. The parking at the resort isn't cheap if you park your own car, and I'd prefer a local to drive the mountain roads in the snow instead of us. We didn't need a car while we were up at the resort. The taxi for our family of 4, all of our luggage, and door to door transport was only a couple of dollars more than the group van ride... and we could pick what time we wanted to leave. We booked a pick up online a couple of days in advance and it worked out really well. We did the same thing coming back down.

Accommodation / Layout of the Village

For sure accommodation in Sarajevo is much cheaper than it is at Jahorina. We had trouble figuring out the location of many of the airbnbs / booking.com apartments we saw. We didn't really understand where the 'village' was and where amenities might be. There are old A -frames and new apartments scattered all over a very broad geographical region... and we weren't quite sure how to book and avoid walking a long way carrying ski gear.

We ended up scoring with what we picked. It was right across the street from the gondola that is in the middle of the whole resort. Cars can come very close to the main door of the apartment to drop off / pick up, and we could very easily come in and out of our place without a long walk to access a lift. Plus, it was a really new apartment building so it was warm/well sealed, had great wifi, working appliances, and hot showers. (Beating many of the other accommodations we've had on this trip!) The place we stayed was called "Jahorinska Vila" and I would highly recommed it if you're going and want a little apartment. We had a 1-bedroom apartment with a little cozy kitchen, bathroom and a pull out couch in the living room for the girls.

The whole resort is really spread out horizontally so there isn't one main village. There are many scattered buildings here there and everywhere. There was one nicer / newer / fancier resort called Vucko and there were also loads of older A-frames that seemed pretty buried in snow and not very accessible. It didn't really feel like any one area was cut off from services, though, so anyplace that's near a chair lift or gondola would probably work.

Our apartment building. The bottom right window = rental shop

Renting Gear

We weren't quite sure how this would go, but it ended up being totally solid. It turns out there was a rental shop inside our apartment building and the worker there spoke English very well. He even said: "Canadians? What are you doing here!?" as did a few other people, curious why Canadians would fly all the way to Bosnia for skiing... So we were able to rent skis, boots, poles, helmets and goggles just fine - with decent gear for all of us and options for kids sizes no problem. It turns out that many of the accommodations (apartments or "hotels") have a small rental shop in the main floor and lessons as well. We must have seen 10 different "ski school" companies. The only challenge with the gear was that my goggles were pretty scratched up, so my visibility wasn't very good. Jason also had to sign a waiver and work hard to convince them to set his binding DIN settings differently than the height/weight chart suggests.

The Weather

A few weeks ago we tried to ski in Kolasin, Montenegro but it didn't have enough snow to ski. Since then, there's been a lot of snow, especially at Jahorina, and they have a solid base (over 100cm) and great snow. In the few days before we arrived, it had snowed quite a bit. In fact, some of the chairs closed due to high winds before we arrived. And then we arrived and it got quite cold and kept snowing. About -15 C / 5F during the day at the base with lots of windchill and fog/cloud up high (perhaps it got as cold as -30C / -22F up high). The visibility was pretty terrible and the cold was intense. We skied a few runs, then came in for hot soup and a long lunch break before going out again and braving the cold each day. Thankfully the chairs never stopped working or broke down, although 1-2 minor ones were closed the whole time we were there.

There's a car under that snow

Lots of snow

Amazing icicles!

The visibility was like this a lot, especially up higher

On the day we were leaving, the sun came out and we got some amazing views with beautiful blue sky and lots of fresh powder. The drive down the mountain was gorgeous. I was also grateful to be doing that drive when it wasn't actively dumping snow and instead when the visibility and the roads were more clear.

Our Own Clothes

As we packed up our house 9 months ago, I wondered how we would pack for this trip... how to include hot weather of some travel destinations and cold weather as well? I put aside our ski gloves, socks, and warm hats and gave them to family to support us. Recently we had my mom bring those items with her to meet us in Egypt, so we had some of our cold weather items. Jason ended up buying cheap gloves and a warm hat here in Bosnia instead. We wouldn't have been able to find any ski pants but we could have bought warm puffy coats in Sarajevo. We didn't see any of these things for sale at the resort of Jahorina itself. While we were actually skiing, we each had on 2-3 pairs of pants plus our rain pants, and then we wore many shirts and fleece + thin puffy + rain jackets on our tops. We made neck warmers out of other clothes (extra pants or an extra shirt or an extra sports bra!) to cover our chins and mouths against the wind. We were still quite cold, but we made it work.

The Terrrain

The resort has 2 gondolas, 4 rope tows (T-bars), 6 chairlifts, and a few small J-bar lifts/surface lifts. I would guess that each lift has about 2 runs that it serves. We didn't wait in line for more than a couple minutes, and compared to home it felt like there were way more lifts than we are used to for a particular area of terrain.

Many of the runs were greens and blues (labeled here as blue and red), and we didn't ever see any black runs. There are a few there, but the visibility and wind up high was so strong we couldn't see much.

We colored in with marker where we skied and tried our best to ski every open run at the resort

The Culture

We skied on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and it was surprisingly busy at the resort. It seemed really common for a family to be there with their kids, and we heard that Bosnian school kids learn to ski for free. We saw license plates parked from Bosnia, Serbia, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Germany.

We've never skied in Europe at all but two things surprised us:

1) It's not common to ski off the main run. Almost all the locals, on their racing-style skis, stay on the main run, even if parts are icy. Just off the main run, there were loads of beautiful sections of untouched powder just begging to be skied! But it's not commonly done here. Even though it's in bounds, it's not really patrolled or marked, so you are taking your chances if you go into the trees as you could run into a creek or a rock or a hole... and we aren't quite sure what would happen if you had an injury while off the main run. Jason explored a little bit more than us, and was smart at one decision to return to the main route instead of further exploration when he remembered that avalanche control in bounds isn't a thing here like it is at home. We did find a few great powder stashes, though!

Skiing into the powder below is not common, and we're not quite sure if it's 'allowed' or not

2) Loading the chair / gondola is a bit chaotic. Thankfully it was never too crowded, but there isn't a line-up-and-get-yourself-organized-into-groups process. It's just a big mash-up of people pushing forward until you get on the gondola. Sometimes we would try to get on as a group of 4 but then only some of us would make it, and then the next person or pair would take the next ride. At a chairlift, there's a bit more of a process after you go through the ticket scanner gate, but getting there is still a challenge, and you're still not quite sure who will actually be the lucky 6 to get on the 6-chair until you're pushing forward in your lane. Once Ava and I were attempting to board together, but there were 5 in the line already. She pushed me forward and said 'Go ahead, Mommy. I'll figure it out.' and she got on the next chair. Another time we had a VERY full gondola and she practically had someone sitting on each of her thighs as people squished in to fit. One gondola had a place to stand your skis in the middle of the car instead of outside on the doors, which we hadn't seen before.

Food

We packed up a decent amount of grocery store supplies when leaving Sarajevo and took it up with us, because we weren't quite sure what would be available. I'm glad we did because we only saw two very small markets (there might have been another couple in other sections of accommodation) and the supplies were expensive (for Bosnia). We ate all of our meals/snacks/drinks in our apartment the whole time. We also drank a LOT of hot chocolate, which was stocked in our apartment, which was delicious! There were 1-2 restaurants around, but it seemed pretty uninviting to walk back out in the cold to go and find a restuarant once we were nicely inside our place. There were a few warming cafes midway up the mountain that we could have stopped at for a hot drink if we had just wanted a brief stop in the ski day.

The 'grocery store' is that little market under a nearby apartment building

Costs

Curious how much things cost? Lift tickets for 4 of us for 3 days = $325 USD total. Gear rental for 4 of us for 3 days = $210 USD total. Accommodation for 4 nights = $430 USD. Not cheap compared to other traveling we're doing, especially in this country, but for a ski vacation, it's definitely more affordable than anywhere in North America and other parts of Europe.

Overall

We feel really stoked that we got to go skiing in Bosnia. We've all now skied in 3 countries: Canada, USA and Bosnia and Herzegovina. How funny is that?! It was a fun experience to do a different activity than a lot of the similar sightseeing things we have been doing. The weather was a real shame because we couldn't enjoy the views, the top of the mountain, or get out of our apartment as often as we would have liked. But we still made skiing happen, and it was still mostly fun.

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