Hiking the Slovenian Alps

Panorama

Trip Data

  • Pho­tos: Photo Gal­lery
  • Hikers: me, Bri­an, Mark
  • Routes & GPX: See be­low, by day
  • Loc­a­tion: Slov­e­nia’s Ju­li­an Alps
  • Mileage: 72 miles over 7 days
  • As­cent: 19,000 feet over 7 days
  • El­ev­a­tion: 3000 - 6000ft, roughly
  • Date: 11-17 Aug 2024
  • Dur­a­tion: 7 days
  • Weath­er: 60s-90s (too hot)
  • Con­di­tions: Clear and sunny

Journal

“How about hik­ing in Slov­e­nia?” asked Mark.

“Sure,” said Bri­an.

“Slov­e­nia???” I thought.

“Sure,” I said.

So, with Mark, off we went. Au­gust. Ju­li­an Alps. Or­gan­ized by an ad­ven­ture hik­ing com­pany. A week of day-hik­ing across the coun­try, with nights spent in ho­tels, and bags fer­ried by pre-ar­ranged taxi.

Def­in­itely an ex­plor­a­tion-kinda trip. See a new place. Dis­cov­er what hik­ing in the Ju­li­an Alps was like. Learn a few ba­sics about Slov­e­nia… such as where it was.

The Trip

Slov­e­nia is north of Italy, south of Aus­tria, and feels a little like a Switzer­land with few­er moun­tains, cows, and trains. Miro, our high-fla­vor taxi driver, would be really ir­rit­ated if he read that; the Swiss are the worst. So leg­al­ist­ic, so or­gan­ized, so ex­pens­ive. Al­most as bad as the Nor­we­gi­ans.

We few in­to Slov­e­nia’s main and only city, Ljubljana, which is pro­nounced just like it’s spelled. We spent our week in the north­w­est quad­rant of the coun­try, where they keep most of their moun­tains.

It was Au­gust, and we’re melt­ing the plan­et, so it was hot. The high-end-ish hotel in the tour­ist town of Bled had air con­di­tion­ing. The oth­ers had win­dows. The hik­ing and sleep­ing parts of this trip would prob­ably have been a lot more en­joy­able in May or Oc­to­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia, over half of the Slov­e­ni­an pop­u­la­tion speaks Eng­lish. How­ever, in our ex­per­i­ence, every­one does. (Ex­cept the air­port shuttle guy, who still gave a pretty pass­able tour of Ljubljana.) It was really in­ter­est­ing to hear it used reg­u­larly as the com­mon com­mu­nic­a­tion lan­guage between people from dif­fer­ent areas of Europe.

The first town we stayed in, Jez­er­sko, which is not pro­nounced like that, was a rur­al farm­ing vil­lage mas­quer­ad­ing as a tour­ist des­tin­a­tion. We figured this out after eat­ing in the only open res­taur­ant in town for the 3rd night in a row, where they serve any kind of meat you like, as long as it’s from a pig or a trout. We ar­rived in Jez­er­sko via a very smooth Mer­cedes, cour­tesy of Miro the pan-European taxi driver, an en­ter­tain­ing Ser­bi­an con­spir­acy the­or­ist who learned his Eng­lish from Amer­ic­an movies. Oh, and maybe in school.

After 3 days of hik­ing there, the young ghost of Speed Racer fer­ried us to our 2nd hik­ing loc­a­tion near the Aus­tri­an bor­der in a van that only needed two wheels on the corners. We sur­vived.

The second town we stayed in, Be­gun­je, also pro­nounced dif­fer­ently than that, is the home of a polka mu­sic palace, built and run by a plat­in­um-al­bum polka band nat­ive to Slov­e­nia. They have a mu­seum, host huge polka mu­sic events on the week­end, and run a small hotel that we stayed at, where they play their al­bums con­tinu­ously for their guests. We sur­vived.

The next night, we stayed at Lake Bled, pro­nounced in more or less the only way you could ima­gine. It’s the premi­er tour­ist zone in Slov­e­nia, com­plete with castles, is­lands, and a casino. We found good food, good cof­fee, good ice cream, and clean, cool rooms.

The fi­nal two days of hik­ing took us in­to Triglav Na­tion­al Park, home to the highest peaks in Slov­e­nia. The hik­ing and views were spec­tac­u­lar. We spent the first night at a biath­lon camp deep in the forest, watch­ing young kids be­ing trained to punch at each oth­er, shoot at stuff, and then skate away as fast as they could go.

We ended the hike at Lake Bo­heen, which is not spelled that way, but is prob­ably your best at­tempt at it if you’re Amer­ic­an. The gor­geous alpine lake was over­loaded with swel­ter­ing campers and tour­ists. Bri­an and I took a boat across the lake then a cable car up in­to the cool­er moun­tains for views of the Triglav peaks, while Mark watched young­sters play mini golf.

Three Losses

This trip was not­able for losses.

One

When I checked out the hotel in Loobiey­awna, I in­ad­vert­ently left my Garmin watch and In Reach emer­gency ra­dio in my room. Later that day, after get­ting dropped off in Yez­er­sko by Miro, I figured this out. I called the hotel, and they con­firmed they had dis­covered a watch and a walk­ie-talk­ie.

For­tu­nately, Mark had Miro’s num­ber, so we called to see if he could help, and he was will­ing to go right back in­to the city to pick them up, then bring them back to us for the cost of an­oth­er taxi ride. In the mean­time, we went on our first hike, which turned out to be hot­ter, steep­er, and slower than we had planned, so Mark, who had less jet lag and more en­ergy than Bri­an or I, ef­fect­ively sprin­ted back in­to town from the top of the hike, ar­riv­ing just in time to meet Miro.

Two

Later that day, I kid you not, I reached for my wal­let to pull out my ATM card and dis­covered my pock­et was empty. Back in the hotel room, I went through everything and con­firmed that a) my pock­et had hole in it, b) the wal­let was gone, c) I had man­aged to pull off two im­port­ant loss events in one day, and d) I felt like a total idi­ot. The last time I’d see it was on the top of the moun­tain we’d just hiked, when I pulled it out to give Mark some euros to pay Miro. There was no way I was go­ing back up that moun­tain for the wal­let, es­pe­cially since it could be any­where on the trail. I star­ted the pro­cess of can­celing cred­it cards, etc.

Then two days later, Mark got a text from Alan, our innkeep­er. My wal­let had been found and re­turned to the tour­ist of­fice, who then con­tac­ted him. Awe­some! We got back in­to town, where Alan gave me back my wal­let and the con­tact in­form­a­tion for the Aus­tri­an fel­low who had found it. I texted him to thank him, ask­ing where he found it. Oddly, he men­tioned a trail we had not been on. Amaz­ing!

At din­ner at the Pork-As-You-Like-It place, we were talk­ing, and a friendly young couple from Bri­tain stopped by our table. “Are you Remy?” “Um, yes?” “Did you get your wal­let back?” “Ummm, yes???” “We found it up on Virnikov! So glad you got it back after we took it to the tour­ist of­fice.” So, yeah, after fur­ther dis­cus­sion we con­firmed it was them, not this Aus­tri­an guy, who had found it. Maybe I was not the only per­son to lose a wal­let in the re­gion that day? No idea. In any case, I tracked down their serv­er and paid for their din­ner be­fore we es­caped the Hut-de-Hog.

Three

Tech­nic­ally not a loss; more of a theft.

After es­cap­ing the Polka Mu­sic Moth­er­lode, we paused after sum­mit­ing a tough climb on the trail, look­ing back in­to town. Mark said, “oh, hmmmm”, and pulled the huge met­al hotel room key from the night be­fore out his pock­et. No way we were go­ing back.

Later that day, he tried to talk our driver in­to drop­ping it by the hotel, cause no town in Slov­e­nia is really that far out of any­one’s way…. But no, the driver was busy. As we checked in to our hotel in Lake Bled, though, the desk clerk there asked Mark for the key from the polka hotel back in Be­gun­y­uh. They had con­tac­ted the hike or­gan­iz­ing group to see where we were go­ing to be next and tracked us down. Key re­turned with ba­sic­ally no ef­fort.

The Hikes

Around Jezersko:

  • Day 1 - Virnikov As­cent (route) (6.5 miles, 2600 ft as­cent). Mixed qual­ity trails, steep and rooty in parts, pretty good view at the sum­mit.
  • Day 2 - Hike up to Ceska Kosa (route) (8.5 miles, 2500 ft as­cent). A climb up to cool little moun­tain hut that serves meals and drinks. Mixed qual­ity trails (par­tic­u­larly bad on our des­cent), pretty good views. Prob­ably the best of these 3 hikes.
  • Day 3 - As­cent of Goli Vrh (route) (10 miles, 3000 ft as­cent). A tough haul up to a peak over­look­ing the Jez­er­sko val­ley. Best views of the three at the end, trail qual­ity mixed.

Around Begunje:

  • Day 4 - Des­cent from Aus­tri­an bor­der (route) (11 miles, 1900 ft as­cent). Cool tun­nel early in the hike and a nice gradu­al climb to an­oth­er hut, but oth­er­wise for­get­table and too much time on forest roads, even count­ing the ex­tra 2 hours we spent try­ing to fol­low a steep ghost trail over a wooded cliff.
  • Day 5 - Up in­to the hills, then back down (route) (10.5 miles, 3200 ft as­cent). More forest roads, no views. Skip­pable.

In Triglav National Park:

  • Day 6 - Hike to Mt. Srenjslo with an ex­ten­sion to Brda (route) (12 miles, 3500 ft as­cent). Best hike of the week. Great trails, glor­i­ous views. We ad­ded an ex­tra loop to the north to hit a high point, which was well worth it.
  • Day 7 - From Pok­ljuka, the biath­lon cen­ter, down to Lake Bo­hinj (route) (8 miles, all down­hill.) Mostly forest roads, some trails. Nice stroll out of the forest to fin­ish off the week.

Broadly speak­ing, the hik­ing was mixed. Some trails were fant­ast­ic; some trails were chaot­ic scrambles straight up steep hills covered in roots. Some views were worth it, some views were non-ex­ist­ent. If we had done this trip just for the hik­ing and not the ex­plor­ing, I’d be dis­ap­poin­ted. As it is, it was good to get a feel for dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try. If I were to hike more there, I’d fo­cus on the Triglav Na­tion­al Park area, which looks dif­fi­cult to ex­plore much bey­ond what we did without shift­ing to moun­tain huts and multi-day hikes.

Looking Back

All-in-all, a fant­ast­ic ex­plor­at­ory trip with good friends. I didn’t have any ma­jor ex­pect­a­tions com­ing in­to this trip, largely hop­ing to have some good hikes while restor­ing life bal­ance. I came away, how­ever, with an ap­pre­ci­ation for the beauty, friend­li­ness, and cul­ture of a coun­try out­side my pre­vi­ous ex­per­i­ence. I have a slightly great­er aware­ness of just how much more there is to ex­plore and un­der­stand in that corner of the world.