Piva Canyon: a guide to Montenegro's green gorge

Piva Canyon is the gorge of the Piva river in north-western Montenegro, running north past Plužine to Šćepan Polje on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. It’s usually given as about 33 km long and up to roughly 1,200 m deep. The river cut it through limestone between four mountain ranges: Bioč, Volujak and Maglić to the west, along the border, and the Piva plateau, Pivska planina, to the east.

Most of the canyon is now under water. The Mratinje Dam closed it in 1975, and the reservoir behind it, Piva Lake, fills the gorge for about 45 km upstream. Below the dam the river still runs free through the last stretch of the canyon to Šćepan Polje, and that’s where Via Ferrata Piva is.

The river and its names

The Piva is sometimes called the river with five names, because the water that reaches it passes through a chain of rivers upstream, each with its own name. By one common count they are the Tušina, the Bukovica, the Pridvorica, the Komarnica and finally the Piva, but other sources put the Bijela in place of the Pridvorica, so the five aren’t fixed. The whole system is given as about 120 km long.

The Piva itself starts at the Sinjac spring under Mount Golija, near Piva Monastery. Before the dam, the spring flowed into the Komarnica there, and from that point the river was called the Piva. That junction is now at the upper end of the lake, and the Komarnica ends in the reservoir.

Further upstream, the upper Komarnica runs through Nevidio, a narrow canyon in the Dragišnica and Komarnica Nature Park, in Šavnik municipality. It’s about 3 to 3.5 km long and was first traversed in 1965. Nevidio is a separate trip: our partners Adventure Montenegro guide canyoning in Nevidio in summer.

Why the water looks the way it does

The river below the dam is very clear, and from the cable on the via ferrata traverse, a few metres above the water, you can see the stones on the bottom of the pools. The shallow pools over pale stones look green, and the deep ones dark blue. Water absorbs the red end of the light that passes through it, so the deeper the water, the bluer it looks, as the US Geological Survey explains. The name of the spring the Piva rises from, Sinjac, comes from an old Slavic word for a bluish, grey-blue colour.

A woman in a purple helmet stands on a rock beside a clear turquoise pool at the bottom of the canyon, with the road bridge high overhead and grey limestone walls on both sides.

The dam and the lake

The Mratinje Dam is a 220 m concrete arch dam, built from 1971 and completed in 1975. Its lake flooded the old town of Plužine, which was rebuilt on the shore. Piva Monastery would have been flooded too, so between 1969 and 1982 it was taken apart stone by stone and moved about 3.5 km to higher ground near Goransko. The lake is up to 188 m deep, and its surface is at about 675 m. The figures, the monastery, boats and swimming are in Piva Lake and the Mratinje Dam.

The canyon road

The M-3 runs the length of the canyon, from Plužine along the lake, over the crest of the dam and down to Šćepan Polje. It was built in the 1970s along with the dam and goes through more than 50 tunnels cut into the rock, most of them short, narrow and unlit. You can’t stop on the dam itself. Plužine to Šćepan Polje is 27 km and about 35 minutes without stops, and the road bridge where the via ferrata starts is 20 km from Plužine. How to get to Piva Canyon has the drive times from the rest of the country.

A white car parked on a narrow road at the mouth of a tunnel cut into a limestone cliff, high above the turquoise water of the reservoir, with grey rock walls on the far shore. — Photo: Ilia, Unsplash License

Where the Piva meets the Tara

At Šćepan Polje the Piva joins the Tara, and the two form the Drina. The confluence itself is just over the border, on the Bosnian bank. The Tara canyon is longer and deeper than the Piva’s, about 80 km long and about 1,300 m deep, and UNESCO describes it as Europe’s deepest gorge. Most one-day Tara rafting trips finish at Šćepan Polje. Tara Canyon vs Piva Canyon compares the two.

Ways to see the canyon

On the lake there are boat cruises, and you can hire kayaks from Piva Nature Park in Plužine.

To get down to the river below the dam, the via ferrata is the way in. The loop starts at the road bridge, drops through the forest to the Kaluđer springs, follows the wall a few metres above the pools and finishes up an 80 m limestone wall back to the bridge. It takes one to two hours, you don’t need experience, and the complete guide goes through it stop by stop.

A girl in a white top and dark skirt stands with her arms out on a mossy boulder in a clear turquoise pool, with the forested walls of the canyon rising on both sides.

If you want to try climbing the rock itself, there’s a bolted sport-climbing crag near Plužine, and Adventure Montenegro also run guided sport climbing in Piva, including sessions for complete beginners. More ideas for the area are in things to do near Piva Canyon.

When to come

We climb all year round when the weather allows. Summer afternoons in Plužine are usually in the mid-20s °C. The best time to visit Piva Canyon goes through what changes from season to season.