Here are twenty photos and a story about how we tackled to climb Mangart. Enjoy!
Beautiful and rugged, the Julian Alps have unbelievable charm. Towering mountains, boulders scattered along long scree slopes under unforgiving crumbly limestone walls, streams plunging into sudden gorges. Yet in between all that, you’ll find soft sun-stroked meadows which explode with colorful wild flowers in the summer, enchanting forests and high peaks with hypnotic views. The northwestern Julian Alps might even be the most photogenic corner of the Slovenian mountains, and Mangart, the third highest peak of Slovenia, together with the highest road to its Mangart Saddle at 2,055 meters their very best gems.
As an owner of a touring agency and a mountain guide I feel fortunate to be able to do many mountain climbs and hikes in Slovenia and see beautiful hard-to-reach places that many only dream about. Whether it’s a daring ascent of Triglav, the highest Slovenian mountain, wandering among colorful meadows in the beautifully remote mountains above Jezersko, or a dreamy hike in the hills around Lake Bled. We’ve done all of them together and it’s been pretty damn awesome.
This past summer, Tracey, a wonderful gal from Australia, whom I shared two great via Ferratas with, asked me if I ever influence people’s decisions about which tour to select. Put aside professional decision making to suggest an appropriate mountain tour based on people’s skills and experience, I most definitely do. To be honest, I always try to push a bit of my own hiking wishes into the decision process and that is not necessarily a bad thing either. Our clients end up visiting all the best places in any given moment of the season.
When flowers bloom in the mountains, we do the most beautiful loops among fragile daffodils, crocuses, wild orchids, gentians, edelweiss and many others. When an abundance of rainfall fills the enchanting Triglav Lakes up to the brim and sometimes even over, we absolutely skip other hikes and go there instead. When it’s time to do a breathtaking via Ferrata in the mountains, we climb Mala Mojstrovka, but when we want a challenging via Ferrata, we go for the bold climb to Gradiška Tura even if the drive takes much longer than the mainstream ones nearby. Given the fact that I’ve been going around Slovenian mountains for a couple of decades, I can confidently say that those who have trusted Exploring Slovenia so far have not been disappointed. Biased or not.
To prove that, here are ten highlights of our best mountain hikes and climbs in the summer season 2023. Enjoy!
It’s been 124 years since Jakob Aljaž, a great patriot and a priest, paid one Austro-Hungarian gulden for the top of Slovenia’s highest mountain. The amount of money one could have bought 50 eggs or 10 liters of milk for. His idea was to oppose the prevalent Germanization of the Slovenian people and the mountains in the Austro-Hungarian Empire back then.
Once the top of Slovenia was again Slovenian, he had a 2×1.25 m symbolic tower erected at the top of Triglav on 7 August 1895. In the following years he also mined an almost impassable 30-cm ridge between the peaks of Triglav and Mali Triglav into the nicely wide ridge we know today; besides, he also built the mountain hut Kredarica at 2,515 m and the Aljaž Hut in the Vrata Valley below Triglav. His far-reaching idea was to stimulate more Slovenians to visit the mountains, conquer the very top of Slovenia – the symbol of the Slovenian nation, make new legendary routes, and thus make the mountains Slovenian again.
There’d been several attempts this year to conquer it, but failed (remember Ski touring below the Triglav North Face, Climbing Triglav in spring and The third try?). Not by much; yet still standing at the top of the second of the two highest peaks doesn’t quite measure up to that sweet feeling of actually reaching the summit, does it? A fourth attempt based on a spontaneous idea from a day before surprisingly succeeded. Not only succeeded, but it excelled so greatly it can be easily placed on my top five hikes of all times!
On the third day of our Soča Valley trip we did another big hike towards Mt. Bavški Grintavec, a 2346-meter peak right above Residence Soča, our comfortable alpine home in the valley. If the outside of the resort was still in the shade and frozen at -4 C when we left at 10 am, we took our layers off just 50 m higher as the sun came out from behind the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. We continued 1550 m up in perfect sunshine and pleasant warmth of a nice November day. We made numerous stops to marvel at beautiful larch forests lit in the vibrant sunshine and to rest at the two mountain huts on the way. So many stops actually that we ran out of time for the peak itself but that wasn’t the point of the day at all. We enjoyed ourselves in the mountains on a beautiful autumn day and were beyond grateful that we didn’t have to drive far for it. The trailhead was literally less than a kilometer away from our resort Residence Soča! 👌 ... See MoreSee Less
On 3rd day of our Soča Valley trip we did another big hike towards Mt. Bavški Grintavec, a 2346m peak right above @residencesoca, our comfortable alpine home in the valley. We continued 1550 m up in perfect sunshine and pleasant warmth of a nice November day. What a day!!!
