Into the mountains: Kamnik-Savinja Alps and Cojzova Koca

We knew that the Kamnik-Savinja Alps would be good, but they were beyond awesome.

Cojzova Koca

The day started off with a good breakfast on the terrace of our hotel in Ljubljana and then we hit the road for the trailhead. Incredible mountains are so close - it only took us 45 min to get to the trailhead. Slovenians love how close geographically they are to their mountains. And there is good public transportation to access them  which means much of the population is into mountainy stuff (hiking, biking, caving, canyoning, etc). 

Breakfast on our hotel's terrace

A trail sign near the trailhead of our hike. Notice that there are no distances, only times

Part way into our hike and looking up at where we will be going - lots more up left to go

A cool cave along the route

Heading up 

Slovenian trails hike along cliffs- a lot

The trail we took was considered moderate

Dan approaching the Hut in the clouds

The Cojzova mountain hut was nestled in a saddle between two mountains, one of which is Grintovec. It sits at 1793 meters. Interestingly, when we looked through the log book, we didn't see any visitors from the USA. The hut crew consisted of three members, all of whom would qualify for AARP. One of the women is a grandmother who takes care of her grandchildren during the week and hikes up every weekend to work at the hut. She told us about her adventures in the Himalayas when she was younger. She was the first Slovenian woman to summit several of the high peaks in the Himalayas. Later in conversation, we found out that she was also the Slovenian cycling champion when she was younger.

Our bunk room in the hut. We shared it with some Croatian men who wanted to chat about USA politics and one also snored loudly :(

Drinking some schnapps at the hut because it is "good for his stomach" according to the hut crew

My beef goulash with polenta hearts

The hut after sunset

Most of the day there were clouds obscuring the view of the mountains, but it cleared up at night. We chatted with the Hut master about different routes to take for the next day and he convinced us that taking the route with a giant warning symbol on it would be okay. However we decided not to try to hike to a different Hut because of the unsafe snow conditions. Instead, we decided to do a big loop from the hut.