Gornja Bistra - Sljeme (past the Oštrica hut - trail 42)

Access to starting point:
Leave the Macelj - Krapina - Zagreb motorway at the Zaprešić exit. From there, head towards Donja Bistra. Drive through the villages of Ivanec, Jablanovec and Novake, where you turn right and reach the village of Poljanica. Gornja Bistra is the next village. In the village, find Sljeme Road and park in the large parking lot in front of the hospital for chronic childhood diseases.
Getting to Gornja Bistra is orientationally quite challenging. You can ask locals for the hospital, as almost everyone knows where it is.

Route description:
From the parking lot, continue south. Orientation is easy because the TV tower on Sljeme is directly ahead. At house number 60, our trail branches left and crosses the stream over a small bridge with a blue railing (markings at the branch are very faded). From the bridge, go straight into the forest and quickly ascend past a few wine cellars (markings start here). From the cellars, go straight at the next junction and enter the forest, where markings are more frequent. Specific to Medvednica is that paths are numbered - ours is 42, which we will often see under the marking.
Once in the forest, our trail climbs quite steeply. The path follows a forest cart track and is overgrown in places. There is also a short spur to the Panjevina viewpoint along the way. When the path finally levels out, we soon reach a wider cart track and then the asphalt rescue-transport road of the Sljeme ski area.
On the road, only ten meters, then back into the forest. The marker is on a spruce, but easy to miss. In the forest, the path is somewhat more overgrown and steep again, then levels out and returns to the road.
Now stay on the road for about a minute to reach the Oštrica hut. Here is a junction of several trails and a spring to refresh, but we continue ahead towards Markov travnik, but only to the next asphalt road crossing, where we continue uphill towards Činovničke livade. After some walking through the forest on a level path, we reach the Krumpirište area, where the ski section of Medvednica begins.
On the ski slope, go along the left eastern side and after a few minutes ascent back into the forest. In five minutes, reach Činovničko sedlo, a junction of trails from Zagreb and the eastern part of Medvednica. Trail 42 ends here.
We go uphill west on trail number 1. It crosses the ski slope and reaches the top of Sljeme at the base of the TV tower.
What sets this trail apart from the multitude from Zagreb is the solitude and peace. It is also the best option, as nowhere on Medvednica can you cover over 800 meters of elevation gain in shorter time.

We recommend: similar trips, summit register