Grad Tuscak od Kapelisca preko Kostanjevca

This is by far one of the most difficult hikes we've ever taken. It's in the "wildest" part of Samoborsko gorje, more of Zumberak in fact, the paths run on the steepest ridges and the worst marked trails of all in the park, there's only one mountain hut that works only on Sundays - and it wasn't a Sunday, and the snow was ankle high and wet.
The hike starts in the center of Kapelisce, following the road to Beder. It's a forest road, connecting Beder and Kostanjevec Podvrski with Norsic Selo. There are scarce marks on the trees but just following the road and the map you cannot miss. Until you get to Kostanjevec P. This is where all the fun starts.
The trail continues through someones backyard just before and across a house number 20. There are no arrows or plates, you have to...find it. There's a box with a stamp for "Scout Mountain Trail" on a fence and a mark on the house a few meters in. And that's it. After that you're on your own for about 250 meters when, if you started of right, you'll see a mark on a branch at the end of the pasture. It's on the right side corner of a cultured evergreen grove. Then it's all downhill:). Just follow the ridge and when it ends descend through the woods in a zigzag line:). The foot of this hill is the lowest point of the hike, there's a Forest Rangers house, that doesn't work, there's aforementioned SMT (SPP in Croatian) box but without the stamp this time and no way of knowing where to go next. Without the map, of course.
The road that passes through this village is Grdanjci - Koretici unpaved road. The map took us over the bridge and a bit back towards Grdanjci, but before a righthand bend with a bridge we had to go straight and "into the creek".
But we didn't. Because we couldn't. A fallen tree and a creek that wants to be a river made us climb up left on all our fours to get to the path that goes straight up on the ridge of Tuscak hill. The sign said it was an hour to the top of Tuscak. The slope is like climbing on Pticji vrh near Ostrc from Velki Dol but do that for an hour. Through the snow. And the "summit" doesn't reward you - it's in the woods, so there's no view and the box contains only - air. No stamp! Off to Tuscak ruins. Downhill - uphill and after 10-15 mins you're there. Probably looked better in it's heydays.
Kravljak village is about 15 minutes from Tuscak, there's a sign after the chapel that points you to Stojdraga and back to Tuscak but we wanted to go to Koretici -- and there were no marks for that. So, as this hike was all about - going through other peoples front and back yards, we went left, off the main road and down, following the telephone lines towards the last two houses in the village. On one of them it said EkoSelo and since it was in our general direction we knew we'll get to Koretici somehow. The goal was to get to the road which we crossed before climbing on Tuscak. And after an hour of miserable hike across the avalanched snow and rocks, off-camber singletracks, fallen trees and wind gusts, we got on the road. It was a 20-minute hike to the Scout Mt Hut, covered in snow and ice though the thermometer said 7degs. It was probably in Kelvins. The hut was closed. We stayed there just enough to hit the stamps. There was still an hour to go to Norsic Selo. The trail goes behind the hut, connects to the "road" but takes off soon up the hill, taking a shorter but steeper direction to the village. This trail was snow covered with hip deep parts, scarce marks on the trees and no human activity in a long time:).
With checking the map quite often we managed to get to Norsic Selo and on the dry paved road that took us back to Kapelisce.
We were soaking wet despite the gaiters and goretex - sometimes even the technology can't keep up:). And we were tired beyond belief.
It was sort of involuntary testing of our limits and we might be proud to have accomplished this hike but I don't think we've really enjoyed it. I think that the "feeling unsafe" factor was guilty of it.

In the end, probably the best season for taking these trails would be a late autumn day, when the forest is already leafless, grass isn't high and all the crawly creatures are ready for their winter nap:). And making sure that there hadn't been any violent storms before:).