A rucksack, camera and 550km of mountain trail – The Slovene High Level Route.

This is the second guest article by Roy and Justi and it helps to celebrate the publishing of their second book :
Trekking in Slovenia – the Slovene High Level Route by Justi Carey and Roy Clark.

“The outdoor life appears intrinsic in Slovenia’s culture, not only for many local rural
livelihoods but also for their recreation and great sense of adventure. For such a small
country it has a fantastic wealth of waymarked trails that crisscross every county and
over 300 manned mountain huts and valley refuges can be found strategically placed
along the routes. “

The PTR team have a special affinity with Slovenia following two trips there and this book and country come highly recommended to anyone who loves mountains and walking. This article, especially written for our photo travellers, touches on some of the trials and decisions photographers following the wilder paths have to face.

As well as having the more well known long distance trails that pass through the land, like the European E6 and E7 and the Via Alpina, it also has another, known mostly only to Slovenes themselves – the 550km long Transverzala or Slovenska Planinska Pot. This is a trail that crosses the country’s high ground, from Maribor in the north east to Ankaran on the Adriatic coast in the south. It takes in the Pohorje hills, the Kamnik-Savinja and Julian Alps, the Karavanke range that forms the natural border with Austria, the Bohinj mountains, many central lower hills and eventually passes through wild maquis and scrub as you approach the coast. When you realize just how passionate the Slovenes are about mountaineering and trekking, it doesn’t come as a great surprise to discover that the Transverzala was the first long distance route to be established in any of Europe’s alpine countries. Like all Slovene mountain trails, it is waymarked with the characteristic ‘target’ sign and also with a number 1.

It was a challenge to be taken up and being given the opportunity to write the first English language guidebook for the route was definitely an added bonus. One of the most enjoyable parts of the challenge for me was to get the best photos I could for the guidebook. As with our first book, the goal was to get descriptive shots that showed important sections of the route, cols and passes, path junctions, hut accommodation etc., but, as always, I was hoping for those magical elusive moments when good light and spectacular mountain scenery combine and a lone walker is highlighted on a summit ridge, adding scale and perspective – rare moments indeed when you have to keep walking to get the route done and meet publishing deadlines – you don’t have the luxury of being able to have a short walk and a purely ‘photos only’ day out!

I was not so concerned with getting useable shots in the high mountain sections – the Julian/Kamnik-Savinja Alps and the Bohinj hills offer enough drama and beauty for most folk with an interest in photography – but I had my doubts about the lower hills on the southern section of the route. Many of the southern hills are below the tree line and I wasn’t sure how I could make shots of forest paths and hill tops (where any available view would likely be of more endless tree tops) interesting. This proved to be the case for some sections, so I concentrated more on flower images and macro shots of butterflies when time allowed. Fortunately though, the route also travelled through scenic villages and passed many places of interest – like the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Škocjan caves.

As usual, I was trying to be selective with which camera kit to take/leave out – but even more so on such a long trail which involved more consecutive nights spent in mountain huts than was necessary for our last book about the Julian Alps. I used an old Nikon FE, as its low weight, solid construction and simple functions make it a good outdoor choice, complimented with some sharp primes, 50mm, 35mm and a 200mm in the high mountains. On the more featureless southern sections, I swapped the 200mm for a 100mm Macro. I took my smallish Gitzo (1.7kg) tripod with me for most of the route but swapped this for a more basic aluminium and plastic job to try and reduce the weight on the longer sections. I use a tripod a lot for setting up delayed timer shots, with myself in the picture when no-one else is around to add scale to the shot. Occasionally I took a small flash unit for hut interiors and fill flash. This was to be my last serious outing using 35mm film camera and lenses. I’ve always liked the excellent vibrancy and colour of good slide film and even the anticipation of picking up the results of your efforts from the developers, but this year a few ‘incidents’ left me looking forward to next year when I’ll be working with digital. Some examples being – having a few rolls of supposedly fresh film being developed with a strange magenta colour cast, the usual trials of loading film on exposed summits, but one of the worst moments was going to the developers to collect a week’s worth of film for a particularly remote section of the walk, only to find dozens of slides of a child’s christening! Fortunately disaster was averted and the proud parents of the child returned my slides to the developers, but only after six weeks of very anxious waiting and hoping.

For photographers looking for dramatic mountain shots, the Julian and Kamnik- Savinnja Alps won’t disappoint.  The Karavanke is a more gentle range – still high hills, but wonderful for grassy, flower covered slopes, and they also give great views of the higher ranges. One particular section, south of the main peaks, is a long escarpment high above the town of Ajdovšcina, known as the Gora. Its diversity of flowers, wildlife and interesting geology is stunning. It is also an area that appears to mark a strong change from an Alpine climate to a Mediterranean one.

Further south again, as the coast is approached, the scenery becomes less dramatic but there is plenty of scope for wild flowers, butterflies and sunsets over the the Adriatic Sea – the routes final destination. The Slovenska Planinska Pot is a beautiful route in a beautiful country, demanding in some sections, gentle and easy in others, where peace and solitude can be found, particularly in some of the less frequented southern sections where you may be more likely to encounter a deer or even a bear rather than people.

Links

The Julian Alps of Slovenia, Europe – walking and trekking the first book in this series.

Trekking in Slovenia – the Slovene High Level Route – Europe

See the first PTR article here.

Cicerone travel guides.