Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 1, 2025

1796m

Ilirska Bistrica, Slovenia

Snežnik is a standalone objective that boasts over 1000 m prominence in southern Slovenia not far from the border with Croatia. This peak does not offer much mountaineering interest but the prominence attracts peak baggers from all over the world. I have to admit that this peak-bagging thing does start to become weird when a bunch of us travelled halfway across the globe to do this seemingly meaningless hike. The views are nice, at least. Adam and I decided spontaneously to add this objective into the already-long day, after finishing Grintovec earlier in the morning. We still had energy to spare, and the weather was nicer towards south. There’s a nasty weather system coming in from the west on the next day so we had to drive away from the Alps anyway.

The driving took about 3 hours and the traffics through Ljubljana was terrible. It wasn’t too bad for our way but the reserve direction was basically parked. I wondered how we were going to come back later in the evening as Adam had already booked a hotel for us in the vicinity of Ljubljana. That’s something to worry about later, though. Google Map eventually directed us into the village of Ilirska Bistrica and then we turned left onto the winding but paved access road. This road was over 20 km long and narrow the entire way with countless blind corners. There weren’t much traffics but for once in a while we would encounter a fast going vehicle like a missile so I must stay 100% alert. For the final few kilometers on the dirt roads we followed Rob Woodall’s direction and drove to the supposed parking area without issues. A higher clearance vehicle could have pushed for another kilometer to the absolute drivable end. We only had a 2WD rental car so we were happy to park at exactly where Rob (and everyone else) parked. A bunch of locals had even parked a few kilometers back and walked at least an extra hour each way.

The forecast was calling for weather approaching from the west and north so we quickly geared up and started the short ascent. This would still require 300 m elevation gain and 4 km round trip distance so it wasn’t “nothing”. We still had to carry our respective backpacks and treat it as a “proper hike”. After a while of plodding we arrived at the 4WD trail-head and not to my surprise, there were two jeeps parked. The trail wasn’t too busy but we did encounter a few groups and most of them were families doing their summer thing. The trail was quite rocky towards the summit so it wasn’t very enjoyable after completing the 1600-m ascent/descent of Grintovec earlier in the day. There’s a hut on the summit but we didn’t bother to check out. And we could see the thunderstorms building up to the north, so we couldn’t linger.

After getting enough of the views (especially towards Vojak to the south) we started the descent. In one shot we got back to the trail-head. We were both tired from the near-2000m elevation gain on this day but we still had a few hours to kill. None of us had been to Croatia so we decided to drive farther south to tag Vojak. It’s basically a drive-up so wouldn’t consume too much of our energy.