Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 4, 2025

1507m

Friuli-Venezia-Giulia Region, Italy

Monte San Simeone is a rather insignificant jungle peak in the Italian part of the Julian Alps but boasts over 1000 m prominence as it’s completely detached from the rest of the range. Adam noticed this objective and noted that the ascent would only require 300 m elevation gain according to Petter’s most recent trip report. I thought this one could be added to the day of Jôf di Montasio so we headed that way afterward finishing the primary objective of the day.

The crux for Monte San Simeone was definitely the drive to the trail-head. While the entire access road is paved, the road is extremely narrow and winding with a shit ton amount of blind corners, that it was next to impossible to pass the oncoming traffics. Thankfully this is not a popular hike (yet), and is only mostly known among the locals. Adam and I were heading up in the early afternoon hours which wasn’t great. We still encountered 4 or 5 vehicles coming down, and every time one of us would have to back down a ways to allow the other vehicle to get by. This was awfully stressful, but with perseverance I drove us all the way to the upper mountain’s “plateau” where a bunch of houses were located. I even managed to drive us further than Petter’s starting point onto the dirt roads, but stopped in front of a muddy stretch. If not because of the recent copious amount of precipitation we could have driven this rental, low-clearance 2WD all the way to the actual trail-head but it was a good thing that we didn’t push.

The walk to the trail-head took about 5 minutes so it wasn’t a big deal. The hike itself had nothing to take note of as it’s a jungle trail with limited views. The best view was actually from the east peak but it was clear that this wasn’t the highest point of the mountain. After taking in some scenery I led us traversing towards the true summit which was not to my surprise, entirely forested with no view whatsoever. We went beyond Petter’s “summit” and called it on the next high point. My Gaia map showed a potential viewpoint with more descending towards the NW but we didn’t bother with that. We got to the highest point and that’s all we needed.

The traversing back towards the eastern sub-summit required care as the route was overgrown and bushy. We didn’t actually go all the way to the east summit but rather took a short-cut through the bushes. There wasn’t much thrashing involved but the grass was quite tall, obscuring the views of the footings. The rest of the descent was uneventful and our round trip time was just over an hour. The drive-out was also uneventful as we met nobody coming up (thankfully), and then we spent the rest of the day driving back into Slovenia to position ourselves for Triglav.