Križevac: the climb nobody warns you about
The descent is timed separately and takes the same forty minutes as the climb, because the blocks underfoot are large and loose. Every published figure we could find gives one number for the climb and none at all for coming down — which is the number that has to happen in daylight.
Križevac is the higher of the two hills, and the one people underestimate. It is 235 metres of ascent from the foot, on a path of large, sharp limestone blocks that are not bedded in — they move.
The two numbers
Forty minutes up. Forty minutes down. Not a rounding of one figure into the other: they were walked and timed separately on 27 August 2026, and they came back the same, because the blocks that slow you on the way up slow you just as much on the way down. Most people expect the descent to be the easy half. On this hill it is not.
Add the walk from the church and the whole thing is sixty-five minutes from the west door of St James to the cross: twenty-five on the flat along Put Križevca, then forty on the hill.
Where it gets hard
At the first station of the Way of the Cross, immediately after you leave Put Križevca. There is no gentle section first. Whatever you are wearing on your feet when you reach that point is what you are climbing in.
There is almost no shade — a few thin low trees and nothing else — which is what makes an August afternoon here a different proposition from an August morning.
Start by this time, or come down in the dark
The number that matters on a hill is not sunset. It is last usable light — the end of civil twilight, roughly half an hour after the sun goes down. Plan a descent to sunset and you cut the evening short for nothing; plan it to full dark and you come down loose limestone with a phone torch.
| Month | Sunset | Last usable light | Start Križevac by |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 16:38 | 17:10 | 15:00 |
| February | 17:19 | 17:48 | 15:38 |
| March | 17:54 | 18:23 | 16:13 |
| April | 19:30 | 20:00 | 17:50 |
| May | 20:05 | 20:38 | 18:28 |
| June | 20:30 | 21:06 | 18:56 |
| July | 20:27 | 21:01 | 18:51 |
| August | 19:53 | 20:24 | 18:14 |
| September | 19:01 | 19:29 | 17:19 |
| October | 18:07 | 18:36 | 16:26 |
| November | 16:26 | 16:56 | 14:46 |
| December | 16:14 | 16:47 | 14:37 |
Working: 40 min up + 30 min at the top + 40 min down +20 min buffer = 2 h 10 before last usable light. The climb and the descent were walked and timed; the buffer is ours, and it is deliberately generous — a measured time is a fit adult's on a dry day. Twilight is worked out for 43.1756° N, 17.6681° E, mid-month, in local time. Works with no signal, and it prints.
After dark
The climb is not lit. Marko Jurić climbed it on 23 September 2026, setting out after the last usable light. The walk from the church is lit as far as the start of the climb; from there to the top there is no light on the path. The cross at the summit is lit — that is the light you see from the village, and it does not reach the path.
So the table above is the plan, not the lamps: on this hill, being caught by the dark means coming down loose limestone by torch.
What we have not checked
What the ground does in the wet: the surface was recorded dry.