Best Hike in Triglav National Park: Mount Viševnik

In the northwestern reaches of Slovenia, where the borders of Italy and Austria converge, the Julian Alps rise like guardians over the breathtaking landscape. Here lies Triglav National Park, Slovenia's only national park named for its towering centerpiece. This pristine wilderness is a haven for adventurers, offering countless epic hikes. Among them, the trek to the summit of Visevnik stands apart. Blanketed in snow even in early October, this peak rewards the brave with sweeping views of the park's untamed beauty. The climb was steep, the trail was treacherous, but the reward was unforgettable. And here's how it went. Good morning guys and welcome to the Julian Alps of Slovenia. If you've been watching the other Slovenia videos, you know we've had some really rainy weather in Ljubljana and Lake Bled, but today we just have these beautiful blue skies and you can see the snow-capped peaks here. And we are just about a 30-minute drive outside of the little village of Lake Bled, and we've come out to the Triglav National Park, which is one of the only national parks here and has some of the highest mountains in the Julian Alps. And the plan is to make it up to Visevnik, which is about 2,050 meters high or roughly just over 6,000 feet. And it's early October now, but they've had a lot of fresh snowfall already this season, so we can see some of the mountain peaks here already have snow. So the hike is only supposed to be about three or four miles hiking up to the top of Visevnik, where you'd get some beautiful views of the opposing ridge of Triglav, one of the highest points here. But we'll see how far we can get with all of the snow here. And we are starting now at about 8 30 in the morning, so let's start the hike up to Visevnik. We've just been hiking for the first 45 minutes or so, and we were hiking through the woods right along the edge of the little ski slopes that they have there. And now we're up above the ski slopes, and we had some beautiful views looking back over some mountain ridges in the distance, and now we're just going steadily up. But it's really cool because we have the snow here, but then we also have the colorful yellow fall foliage here. So looking at a map, it looks like we're pretty far along. So yeah, let's just keep going upwards. So we have just finished our first little set of switchbacks up that hill from the ski slopes, and there's a little bit of a flat spot here, but it's amazing how much snow there is even just down here. We're probably in about a foot of snow, so I'm not sure what it's going to be like trying to get to the summit up there when it gets a little bit higher and a little bit steeper. But yep, it just flattens out here a bit, and that looks like we have another set of switchbacks right over on this hill. So we've just come up that other hill, a little switchback through some of the snow here. We've come to a little plateau opening here that gives us just some views looking off over the Triglav National Park. We still have some trees blocking some of like the epic views, but through the trees you can see some of these snow-capped peaks, and very beautiful. But we have the clouds coming in, so we're going to keep heading up to the summit here to try to get some views from up there before We've been getting some nice views through the clouds here of some of the mountain ridges back there, and then I think we have just about one last push to the ascent here, but it looks like it's deep in the snow and right up the snow. But right now we have the summit is like just illuminated a little bit by the sun, so hoping to get up there and at least have some visibility. But yeah, let's keep pushing the last little bit here. We made it to the snow field, which is just a blanket of snow, and then we have like these snow steps that we're just going to be hiking straight up basically to the summit. There might be a little bit more of a ridge or scramble that we have to do, but yeah, basically going straight up the snow now. We have just come up that snow field where we were just going straight up the snow. It was just like steps just stepping up into the snow there. And we've come to this ridge where we're getting our first view looking into the bowl of the mountain here, and then the clouds are coming in and out like there's some sun and then there's some blue skies and then clouds are coming through. But right behind me here we can see the fall summit and then the summit. We're probably just a couple hundred meters away from the top here, so we're going to go around this and then hopefully Visevnik here, and it's about 11 a.m. So it took about only two and a half hours or so, and as you saw it was like pretty intense hiking in a lot of the snow. Some places it was quite slippery, so you had to really be careful of your footing here. And then up here we are just covered in snow. It's just so beautiful, but unfortunately right now we have clouds covering the top, but it's very calm up here. It's not windy, not too cold, so I think we're ready to stay up here for a little bit, snack a little bit, and see if clouds move around at all so that we get some of the views of the mountains out here. Because right across here somewhere should be Triglav, which is the highest point in Slovenia and the namesake for the national park. And yeah, just all around here I'm sure we would get beautiful views of some of the Julian Alps. So yeah, let's hang out here for a little bit, just enjoy being on the summit, enjoy the little bit of kind of like misty, snowy, cloudy, rocky views and so we've spent just about an hour up on top of the peak here. And we got a couple windows of visibility where we got some views looking out over the valley, some of the mountains. We didn't get like a crystal clear view, but some really nice views. And just again, the weather was so nice. It's not too windy, not too cold, so it's really cool just spending an hour up here enjoying some of these views of the Slovenian mountains here. So anyways, we're gonna head back down, but it could be quite treacherous, so I'm not sure how much of that I'm gonna be filming on the way down. But yeah, a pretty rough downhill trek coming through all of that snow. It was starting to turn into slush, so it was quite slippery. There was a lot of exposure on one way as we were going down the ridge there, and just very slippery and very steep too on the way down. But yeah, very beautiful, and now we are just in the last quarter mile or so where we're walking through these beautiful tall trees here, and soon we'll be back to the car park. Yeah, so overall, I mean besides all of the snow, if you were doing this more during the summer, it's really not that hard of a hike. It only took about two and a half hours to get up, and then we really took our time at the top just enjoying some of the views and enjoying just the beautiful weather up there. It's so still and peaceful up on top of that mountain. But unfortunately, we never got the full visibility that you could get of the Julian Alps and the Triglav National Park from up there. But fortunately, we still have tomorrow, and my friend here has a car, so we're hoping to drive around a little bit more of the Triglav National Park, get some more views, and tomorrow should be another stunningly beautiful day, probably even better than today. So hopefully, we'll go on some more adventures in the Triglav National Park then, and then this afternoon, I don't know if we'll be seeing much more of the Triglav Park. We're going to drive around a little bit. Maybe we'll find a couple little viewpoints here and there. So yeah, I'll show you what we see this afternoon, or if not, we'll see you tomorrow when we explore more of Triglav National Park and the Julian Alps and we drove by these beautiful marshes and these cute little villages with little church steeples, and it's just a beautiful drive. And we've come down to the Lake Bohinj, which is this three-mile long lake here, and we're in the little village on the end near Bled. We're probably like a 20-minute drive from Lake Bled, so it's another lake that's near the Lake Bled area. You could do a day trip up here. There's some boats you can take out. You can go kayaking and canoeing out on these boats, but from here, you just have this beautiful reflection of the mountains on the lake here, and then you're surrounded by some of these snow-capped peaks as well. So we probably have just about an hour here. We're going to go grab a coffee at one of the little cafes on the lake but just a beautiful lake here. So serene, so peaceful. Some of my friends went swimming in there. It's way too cold for me, but it would be a good place for a swim. The water's just so calm and so beautiful. You have a couple of these boats that can take you out, and I just had a lot of fun droning around the lake here and seeing a couple of the really cute little cabins that are built right onto the lake here, the surrounding mountains. And if it was clear, we would see some more of the snow-capped peaks that are just surrounding us here. And again, this is an easy day trip. Even if you don't have a car, there are buses that can take you from Lake Bled up to Bohinj, and you can walk around the whole lake, which is about 12 kilometers. So it would be quite the walk, but a beautiful walk, getting these beautiful views and reflections. So anyways, that's about it for today's trip to Triglav. Again, hopefully if the weather is good tomorrow, we're hoping to do another little road trip adventure, maybe some more hiking in the Julian Alps here. So yeah, hopefully we'll see you guys tomorrow morning when we explore more of this gorgeous region of Slovenia. So we'll see you then.