Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 5, 2025

2864m

Triglav National Park, Slovenia

Triglav is the highest peak in the Julian Alps and also the highest peak in Slovenia making it one of the most sought-after objective in the area, attracting hikers and climbers from all over the world. The standard route is not technically difficult but requires some via ferrata skills, and is physically demanding with over 1800 m elevation gain that cannot be shortened by “driving higher”. There are at least a dozen routes and this peak can be accessed from all directions. I never bothered to dig into the details as I trusted the route used by folks like Rob W., Matt J. and Deividas V. is very much likely the simplest way. If these three guys agreed with the route choice then I would simply follow their footsteps. There are two ways on the lower part of the route so I did make Adam doing some homework. The result was to take Matt’s route both ways as that’s the easiest option, albeit slightly longer.

There had been a lot of hypes about Triglav on social media but for someone with decent scrambling experience this peak should not be a big deal. There’s a 15-m crux wall on the lower route that one might consider using the ferrata kits but elsewhere was just a “glorified scramble” with protections from chains and cables. I decided at the last minute to not bring a harness which was definitely the correct decision. I did bring a helmet this time because there were way too many people on the mountain triggering rock falls. To drive into the park we had to pay 20 EUR for the toll road which we weren’t very happy about, and to make it worse we would have to find a spot to pitch out our tents. There’s no such culture of “free camping” in the Alps and car-camping is generally prohibited, but the laws aren’t strictly enforced as far as I could tell. Adam and I are the type of persons who simply refuse to pay for camping. We also dislike sleeping in crowded huts with people coughing and farting and prefer to do most, if not all of these objectives as one-day, car-to-car push. We took our time looking around, found a dirt road a mere 100 m from Triglav’s trail-head, drove in for 30 m and pitched our tents for the night. Nobody came to fuss around so we got another night of sleep for free.

There was no afternoon thunderstorm in the forecast but we still decided to get up early to beat the heat and the traffics. The alarms were set at 4 am and the plan was to start hiking at the first light. I think we started a little bit later than planned but that was still okay. The headlamps were left in the vehicle as I was confident we could finish this objective well within the daytime range. Adam was quite tired from the day-after-day pushes so I made him setting the pace ahead. A while later we got to the head of this valley. Knowing Rob had made a major mistake by missing the climber’s turn-off we paid close attention to the GPX tracks and made no mistake ourselves. There were also people ahead of us guiding the route. The creek crossing was trivial despite the copious amount of rain two days prior, and in no time we were scrambling up the lower wall. There was lots of 3rd class moves required but nothing worth noting. I mostly didn’t bother to touch the metal rings and artificial hand holds. The next stage was a rising traverse towards climber’s left and this section was very foreshortened, but was mostly just plodding on a trail/path. A few zig-zags with some elevation loss/regain later we arrived at the crux wall, which was definitely intimidating but not difficult. The artificial holds had to be used as otherwise this would be a committing 5th class pitch. I soloed it easily whereas Adam took his time donning harness and using the leashes.

Above the crux wall the route was mostly plodding with some scrambling steps here and there, but nothing more difficult than “easy 3rd class”. A long while later we plodded up some scree and intersected the other (more technical) route. Another 10 minutes of so later we got onto the plateau at 2200 m elevation and took our first real break of the day in the sun. The day had been quite humid lower down, and was going to be nuclear hot higher up. I disliked the next stretch of “slab city” as I very much had to pay 100% attention to the painted arrows and cairns in order to stay on the path with the least amount of resistance. Doing our own route-finding would be fine too, but on a month-long mission like this I preferred to waste as little energy as possible. After what seemed like eternity we scrambled up more 3rd class ledges and traversed to the saddle underneath the upper hut. There’s no point in visiting the hut for day-trippers like ourselves so I went down to the actually saddle for Adam to catch up.

The route had become more obvious above the saddle as there’s basically only one way to get up to Mali Triglav or what I would call the “east summit”. Almost the entire section was cable-protected. The cables were excellent hand holds and I did use a lot of them, but I don’t think they were entirely “required” in dry conditions. We were also up there reasonably early so didn’t meet a lot of the descending traffics, so the ascent to the east peak was mostly cruise sailing. There was some exposure and lots of 3rd class scrambling (even if using the holds) but nothing overly spicy. The view of the true summit was also very intimidating with a line of people on the exposed spine of the ridge, but the scrambling was not bad at all. I easily passed a shit ton of people (both on their way up and down) by stepping away from the ferrata cables and scrambling around. A few bottlenecks could not be avoided so there was still some delays from the traffic jam, but it was “tolerable”. The views were quite foreshortened though and it took me a good while to get to the summit. Adam arrived 10 minutes or so later and we didn’t stay too long up there due to the crowds.

On the descent I decided to go ahead as I enjoyed passing people. For one section I simply balanced down the ridge’s spine and passed at least 20 people struggling with the ferrata cables. I saw one trail runners following me doing the same thing and we quickly got ahead of everybody. I waited for Adam to catch up on Mali Triglav and then descended easily down to the saddle where the high hut locates. Again we didn’t bother to actually visit the hut as we disliked crowded places. I then led us down through the “slab city”, again paying close attention to the painted markings. While descending the lower route of the mountain I encountered two Slovenians who had climbed the north face of Triglav! I sped up to keep up with their descent until the crux wall. I was slightly faster than them on the easier sections but was falling behind on the more technical scrambling parts so they are definitely good rock climbers. They didn’t even bother to stow the trekking poles to down-climb that vertical wall. I did the same, but was far from their level of efficiency. I waited for Adam after he cleared the wall safely and then took off jogging down the rest of the route. Upon seeing the creek I decided to spend some time cooling down, and then power-walked the trail back to the vehicle. My round trip time was 8 hours 45 minutes including all of the breaks, and the moving time was just over 6 hours.