About the route
Mali i Dajtit rises straight above Tirana, and the Dajti Ekspres cable car carries you from the edge of the city to a top station at about 1,050 m in around a quarter of an hour. From there, this route climbs through the forest to Maja e Tujanit. It is one of the easiest ways onto a real mountain from the capital.
One way it is 3.2 km with about 500 m of climbing; there and back the same way it is 6.4 km and about 520 m, which the DIN 33466 rule puts at about 3 h 35 min of walking. A published round trip gives 5.8 km and 470 m. Maja e Tujanit is given as about 1,525 to 1,580 m (Wikipedia gives 1,531 m), and our elevation model puts the end of the line at about 1,530 m. The 1,613 m that some sites give for it belongs to Maja e Dajtit, the main summit just to the south, which carries radio equipment.
The mountain is part of Dajti National Park, and several sources say its paths are mostly not waymarked, so carry the route offline. The season in our data runs April to November. Check that the cable car is running before you go, and when it stops in the evening: without it, the way down to Tirana is a long walk.
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°.
11 % 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.