About the route
Syri i Kaltër, the Blue Eye of Theth, is a deep blue pool in the Theth valley at Kaprre, below the village of Ndërlysaj. It is a different place from the better-known Blue Eye spring near Sarandë in the far south of Albania: if you are in Theth, this is the one you can walk to.
From the church in Theth the line follows the valley down past Ndërlysaj to Kaprre: 8.1 km one way, mostly downhill, with about 260 m of climbing and 400 m of descent. Coming back the same way, the whole day is about 16 km with about 660 m of climbing, which the DIN 33466 rule puts at about 5 h 45 min of walking. Guides quote 17 to 19 km and 650 to 700 m for the same outing, depending on detours such as the Grunas waterfall.
You can shorten the day by starting at Ndërlysaj, which is reached by road from Theth. The way back to Theth is mostly uphill, so keep time and water for it. The season in our data runs May to October; outside the summer months, ask locally about the path and the road.
How we got the numbers
Distance and climb come from the line itself: heights from the Copernicus GLO-30 elevation model (30 m), sampled every 30 m and smoothed with a running median of five samples, because in forest the model measures the top of the trees, and climbing counted once the height has changed by 3 m. These are the figures the app shows. Expect them to differ from a GPS track by 10 % or so.
Walking time follows the DIN 33466 rule used by the German and Austrian alpine clubs, without breaks. Difficulty comes from the whole outing (there and back): the climb and that time, one level up when 30 % or more of the line is on slopes over 30°.
19 % of the line itself runs on slopes over 30° in the elevation model; slopes above it are not counted. This describes the terrain, not today’s conditions, and it is not an avalanche rating.