Our awesome travel crew got a chance to go and visit Slovenia and especially the Triglav National Park area not far from Ljubljana. We wanted to go and explore the more active side of Slovenia as our preferred accommodation was mountain cabins rather than comfortable spa hotels in these beautiful towns in the middle of the mountains.
For sure we were going to visit the towns also with their well known sights. But our main goal for the trip, was to do two longer overnight hikes.
Our first hike was to make it to the Seven Lakes of Triglav and staying in the Koca pri Triglavskih jezerih mountain hut for the night. The hike was a beautiful 8km one way path with 900m of elevation climb. We took it pretty slow to enjoy the views and shoot some photos while hiking. The cabin is located by a lake between high rising mountains, which makes it a breathtaking place. Next morning we took a little different route back to our car with also very incredible views!
Our main goal was to hike to the Triglav Lodge on Kredarica, next to the highest peak in Slovenia which summit stands at 2864m. The hike was going to be very nice, but the weather wasn't looking too promising for us. We still wanted to go as there are some mountain huts on the way, where we could find shelter if the weather turned bad.
The hike is around 12km long, but the 1500m ascent makes it pretty exhausting with all the camera gear. We started the hike at noon and the weather was really nice. You could feel that the storm was coming as the weather started to feel very oppressive. We made it for late lunch in the midway hut, when the first small storm hit us. We waited it out and continued with fairly nice weather towards our destination Kredarica Hut. The last bit of the hike is also super nice and another storm hit like 5 minutes before reaching the hut, so we made it just in time and were able to get our stuff to dry out in the hut.
When we were in the hut us boys were really up for summiting the Triglav the next morning. It is a pretty mentally demanding and scary climb, but definitely doable if you have any experience and good gear. Around half of the people who go up wear Via Ferrata equipment. We had a chat with the lodge host, who said we'd be fine with helmets there as it's also very much faster to do it. We wanted to reach the summit before the sunrise, so saving time was important. We'd have a long hike ahead of us the same day too.
We started the climb at 4 am and it was nice to see in the total darkness how there were others going up too from the small headlamps on the wall. It was really exhausting and demanding climb. We reached the summit just in time for the sunrise and it was totally worth it! One amazing experience for the books!
We got to see other things too on our days in the valley and Lake Bohinj, Lake Bled and Soca Valley were definitely my favorites! I highly recommend going to Slovenia for a trip. It's still fairly untouristy and people are super friendly!
-Daniel
