The Hiking Series - Part 1: The Grand Mountain

As I mentioned in my introduction post I am a guy who loves hiking. And fortunately enough my girlfriend Urška also loves to hike. This means we can bring joy to the world in the form of beautiful nature of the Slovenian Alps.

Yesterday some new snow fell in Slovenia and today the forecast showed pure blue skies. So we decided we should do a hike, since we havent been exercising much lately. The promise of crisp fresh snow and blue skies threw us out of bed at 6 am in the morning. We ate our breakfast and sat in the car and started the hour drive to the place where we start the hike.

We decided to visit the peak of the so-called Velika planina (engl. Grand Mountain) today. Let the name not deceive you. It is not that tall with its 1666 m peak. During the summer the peak is covered with cows because of the good conditions for grazing, as the peak is in reality a pretty big grassy plateau. The plateau is also covered with small round shepard huts where you can get sour milk and other local specialities in the summer. During the winter the mountain is deserted apart for some crazy people like me and my girlfriend.

_{This is a photo of Grand Mountain in the summer.}

During the drive there it was still partly overcast and freezing cold temperatures reaching -15 degrees celsius. But the promise of beautiful nature untouched by humans forced us onward.

We started the hike at about 7am. The Sun shined through the clouds for only a moment before gusts of wind blew the clouds forcing it to hide. The fresh snow that has fallen yesterday has covered the trees like in a fairytale and now gusts of wind where forcing the snowlakes to perform masterful ballet shows right before my eyes.

During the night about half a meter of snow has fallen. Some unfortunate souls must have walked before us sinking thigh-high into the snow. Fortunate for us we could follow their footsteps.

The first part of the hike led us through a small patch of forest on a fairly steep climb. Eventhough the going was tough as the hill was pretty steep and the path not well traveled we were not stopping. We were on a mission.

We finally got to a road that led us to a part of the hill called Mala planina (engl. Small Mountain). There we got our first glimpse of what was ahead of us. On the one hand we could see the shepards cottages covered in snow like we travelled back in time a couple of centuries. On the other hand a blizzard was coming from the west. The wind was picking up and the little snowflakes stung like bees when they hit your eyes in the freezing cold.

As the weather was starting to act up we decided to turn around. The weather forecast was obviously wrong, and luckily the mountain would wait for us when we try to conquer her on a more pleasant day. We started to walk back and we decided to follow the road back to our car instead of fumbling about in the snowy forest. When we were were close to the car all of a sudden the clouds started to tear apart and the sun started to shine through. "Typical!" I said to my girlfriend as we were changing our soking wet clothes.

But we were still happy about the trip, eventhough we have not achieved our goal. There will always be more sunny days! We decided we should still make the most of our day, so we went to visit the nearby natural reserve in the middle of the Alps, called Kamniška Bistrica where we took some more pictures of the now sunny Alps.

As I said, there will always be another day. That means more photos of the beautiful Slovenian mountains, lakes, rivers and other natural wonders.

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_{To always stay to date on my and Urška's adventures please follow me on my profile and Urška at @urskaskamen. If you like this post and want to keep it coming please upvote me. It trully means a lot to a beginner like me. Also If you have any questions feel free to comment and I will definitly try to answer you in a timely manner.}