Slovenia- PICRUTES!

Here come the photos! At the moment Im at a super awesome non-HI hostel in PodKrom, Slovenia. But I'll start at the beginning. There is too much to talk about so I'll breze through it and emphasize the highlights.

When Kirsten, Kyran and I got to the airport everything was cool, Kirsten had rented a car because there wernt any busses to the small town Mojstrana where we had rented an appartment. The car also gave us more freedom travelling with a 16 month old child, The first day we wandered around Mojstrana and Dovje two tiny towns about 2 km appart. This isnt strang however it seems that the general rule in rural slovenia is that the town are 1km in diameter and 2 km appart along winding roads. It makes for mannic insane havigation espesially when everyone is driving 20km over the speed limit and the 2 lane roads are windy and the sze of our one lane roads.

Mojstrana is on the edge of Triglav national park, named after its big mountain. Mojstrana has an Edmontonski club sized ski hill, a skating rink, a tennnis court, a recycle depot, a massive off-leash area, a soccer field. Its pretty decked out for what couldnt be bigger than 2500 people. Dovje accross the valley (think Y when you read J) is about the same size, maybe a little smaller and has a movie theatre, but a few less bells and whistles. There is a monument to a famous mountaineer-music composer in Dovje and I have included a picture of a cast iron topografic map of the nearby mountains. Noteably absent on the map is a dot for Mojstrana. I think there is a little rivalry between the two, because the other photo I have included with the metal black cats had a sign near them telling of a legend that this bridge to Mojstrana was old and wooden and haunted by a black cat. A youth from Dovje (where else?) didnt believe the power of the cat and kicked him off the bridge. Quick as a flash there were hoards of black cats all over him and ˝he barely escaped with his skin in one piece˝. Now you would think this is just a quaint myth but I am 100% sure that it is fact. You should see the cats here. They watch you walk by and stare right into your soul. There is something very powerful and more than a bit uncanny about them. They are definitely the guardians. There are also a lot of happy dogs but the cats are spooky.

Anyway Kirsten and Kyran and I went on a few hikes and one day drove across an insane windy hairpin bend road across Triglav park. But the highlight for me was the morning that I climbed a small mountain. It started off super foggy and the fog broke and sun came out as the day went on. That is where my spectacular high altitude photos are from and my 30 second movie. You’ll have to take my word for it but these pictures don’t do it justice. When I was perched on the top just after I took the movie I saw some tracks below and thought that that was where the path went to . I couldn’t see how the path got there so I bouldered down some jagged rocks. Once I got down it turned out that they were got tracks and I was NOWHERE. But I saw some paths below and headed down the rockfall line and eventually made it home in one piece after a scare with a cliff which was only visible on the map with a magnifying glass. At this point I didn’t have a propper map and I was doing everything from the digital zoom of a picture that I took of a map on a sign. And my batteries were fadeing.

That was great fun. The other really cool think we did was to check out Bled Castle. It is straight out of a fairy tale. It is perched on top of an impossible cliff and there are windy rock stairs to get up to it (see my other movie). It was too dark when I took the pictures so I don’t think they turned out too well. Youll have to use your imagination.

One night Kirsten and I were chilling after she put Kyran to bed and I mentioned that it was saterday the 21st. Kirsten said, you meen saterday the 20th. If it was the 21st I would have missed my flight. And slowly ove the next half hour we became aware that it was indeed Sunday the 21st and my day but not my date was wrong because of something silly I had done with my watch on the time change on the way over and it hadnt mattered until just now. A series or strange coincidences had let us entertain the illusion that 6 day were 5. We had just enjoyed ourselves so much that we accidently took an extraday. Kirsten had to rebook her flight with one bar left on her cell phone life through friends at home. It was too bizzarre. In the end she couldn’t get a flight untill the evening and so we ended up going beck to Bled Castle in the daylight. The picture with my hand in it is the vertigo picture from the side of the magic castle which clearly had a wizzard in it.

Kirsten and I parted ways in the early afternoon and I wrote my last pathetic blog entry and was cursing technology when I set out to hike back to Mojstrana and into Austria. As I walked thr rain turned to wet snow which turned to big fluffy snow and it was exactly 0 degrees for the next 2 days. I camped in the soaking wet in my crazy hammock that night and slept for 14 hours. It was a bit chilly at times but it would have been fine if I had put on an extra layer and if everything wasn’t damp or soaked.

The next morning I got up early after a restfull night. It wouldn’t have been so restfull but I went to bed as night fall 5:00 and got up at 7:30 so in dpight of the electrical storm (in the snow!!) the avalanches, the breaking boughs of treed (because of the heavy snow), the scary thump of snow falling off trees and the pitter patter of snow on the fly sheet (actually reallp peacefull). And in spight of the lake that formed on the uphill side of my fly I got tonns of sleep.

That morning I set out for Mojstrana. There were only a few cars and a few tractos on this alpine backroad. Nobodw stopped for me, but I didn’t wave them down eighter. I was having too much fun absorbing the beautiful scenery. I made it to Zg. Radovna by about 11:00 and exchanged some confused words with a nice older lady. She was the first and only person that I met (I think) who didn’t speak English. I continued down the road and passed a man shovelling snad onto the icy steep windy road but the snow as falling faster than the sand.

Next I got to the turnoff for the rout to climb mount Triglav. I knew that climbing Triglav was right out. It was almost noon and it’s a 14 hour treck with propper equipement and a guide. And there was now a foof of snow on the ground. So I went to see how far I could get safely and to hopefully see the legentary mountain. Unfortunately there was zero visibility though it was definitely a winter wonderland. I was trudging though a tireing six inches to 2 feet of snow and I got a load of powdre dumped directly on my head from an overhanging tree not once but three times. This fluke I took as a sign that roday was not a day to flirt with avalanch danger. That and there were booming earthshaking avalanches now and then up the valley and on the far side. I lost the trail and turned around. One of these days some of you guys will have to come with me and well get some propper equipement and a guide and tackle Triglav.

I’m going to stop the story there for now because I have a lot more to wright but there keep being power outages because of the insane snow fall, we are well past 2 feet in this town now and it has all falen in 3 days. Anyway I need to send my pictures between the power outages. More to come including video clips.

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