Type 2

Feed from Type 2

Feeling slovenely.

I popped down to Slovenia for a couple of weeks in June for some type 1. I don't really have the motivation to write it up properly right now, but here is a summary of what we learned:

Travel:

- If you are driving to Slovenia from the UK then travel time is similar to a trip to the dolomites. Doing it overnight in shifts is a bit of a wounder, but you can always sleep it off in the camp site.
- There is quite a lot of Germany.
- Austrian road tax tariffs are specifically designed to mess with people on 2 week trips.
- All parking around the lake Bohinj area costs 1 euro an hour, or 10 a day.
- Laybys around Virsic & the northern end are either a couple of euros per day or free.

Camping:

- Camp sites are slightly more expensive than in the UK but tend to have good pitches with clean, well equipped facilities.
- For trips to the northern end of the range the site in Dovje is excellent.
- For the Bohinj area the large site in Bohinj Bistrica is pretty good. The site in Ukanc is cheaper, but a lot less convenient for the shops.

Eating out:

- I hope you like Pizza.

Huts:

- Well appointed and not too expensive.
- When they are open.
- When they aren't open the more remote ones do have winter rooms round the back. Fortunately.
- Alpine club membership makes life a lot cheaper, but I wasn't able to get a straight answer on BMC reciprocal rights cards.
- Unmanned "Bivak" huts are locked these days after some problems with vandalism. Keys are held by local mountaineering clubs. The manager of the Dovje camp site was extremely helpful with this.

When to go:

- Not June if you want to guarantee the huts will be open.
- The locals recommend late August.

The routes:

- Mix of walking peaks and via Ferrata. A harness, shock absorber + lid will get you to the top of most of them.
- Climbing/alpine style routes do exist, but english language information on these is almost non existent.
- The sport climbing guide is pretty good, but treat the grading with care. The day we went bolt clipping I got my arse handed to me.

Books:

- "Mountaineering in Slovenia - The Julian Alps and Kamnik and Savinja Alps The Karavanke" Tine Mihelic - Inspirational, but sometimes hard to figure out exactly where the hills are in relation to one another. Well worth the money for the pictures alone!
- "The Julian Alps of Slovenia - Mountain walks and short treks" Justi Carey, Roy Clark - another good one, although the photos aren't quite as shiny.
- "The Julian Alps " Robin Collomb - massively out of date, photo free and poorly typeset but in many ways the best of the bunch. It gives no nonsense route descriptions with exactly the information you need.

Maps:

- 1-50k and 1-25k maps are available. Quality is reasonably good with all trails marked.
- 1-50k maps tend to have a large lat/long grid, which frustrates all but the longest compasses. Not particularly useful with GPS.
- Some of the 1-25k maps have no grid whatsoever!
- Technical data on the maps are limited.

There are some pictures over here: http://www.spectral3d.co.uk/Personal/pics/2010/slovenia_2010/

Posted by upwardlymisanthropic