Six hikes within an hour of Ohrid. Each one walks to something: a lakeside monastery, a fortress, a cave church, a church in a mountain meadow, a peak where you see both lakes, and a pair of glacial lakes. Your last hike was about 6 km with 200 m of climbing, so that's the yardstick. Every route is on a real path or track, with no bushwhacking. Each has a GPX file for AlpineQuest.
Distance vs. climb
Each dot is a full round trip. The amber diamond is your last hike. Up and to the right is harder.
At a glance
Hike
Effort
Round trip
Climb
Top
Drive
Food at the end
Drive times are from Ohrid centre and come from a routing engine. Add 10 to 15 minutes for the two mountain roads (5 and 6). Climbing comes from the GPS recordings where there was one, otherwise from satellite elevation data.
A suggested order
Trpejca first. It's the gentlest, and the lake is still warm enough to swim at the monastery beach. That won't be true for long.
Then the two high ones (Lako Signoj, Labunishta) while the weather holds. They're at 1,900 m or higher. By mid-October it gets cold up there and fog comes in more often, and fog is the one thing that makes those two unpleasant.
Keep the forest hikes (Trebenishta, Vevchani, Peshtani) for late October. They're low, and the oaks and beeches will have turned.
If the kids struggle on one, don't take the next harder one. Every out-and-back route has a named halfway point, so you can turn around early and it still counts.
Before any of them
Loading into AlpineQuest. Open this page on your phone and tap a hike's GPX button. The file downloads, then open it with AlpineQuest (on iPhone, from the Files app or the share sheet). It imports the track and the waypoints together. Download the offline map for the area before you drive up. There's no signal on Galicica or at the Labunishta lakes.
Fire season. Macedonian forests sometimes close to hikers in dry spells, and some years July to September needs a permit. Check at a park office or with your host before going to 3, 4 or 6.
Galicica National Park charges an entry fee per car at the gate (it was 100 denars in 2025). That covers 4 and 5, and 1 if you drive in past Trpejca.
Sheepdogs guard flocks in the high meadows (4, 5 and 6). If one comes at you, stop, stay calm, and let the shepherd call it off. Don't run.
Water. Assume there's none on any of these. Bring more than you think for 5, which has no shade at all.
Sources: most routes and notes come from My Macedonia Blog. Tracks 1, 2, 4 and 6 are the blog author's own GPS recordings from Wikiloc, cut down to the family-sized part. Tracks 3 and 5 follow OpenStreetMap tracks. Nothing here has been walked by us. Treat the GPX as a guide and use your judgment on the ground.