I love winter. I love everything about it. The light snowflakes filling the whole sky and the world turning calm and beautiful. However, when March rolls around, bringing the first warmer days and delicate little flowers, it’s next to impossible to go back to the cold. More likely than not you’ll see me exploring flower-speckled hills and forests than snowy mountains. And when larger parts of hills turn purple from the blooming heather, you can count me in!
As the season turns around and we are suddenly faced with high temperatures and lots of hot sun, it’s nice to look back and daydream about the awesome mountain adventures you’ve done in the past months. Due to a colder start of the spring, the nature remained in its snooze mode for a couple of weeks longer this year, but once it finally did wake up, it was freaking insane! I’d never seen so many daffodils in the mountains before, nor had the mid-elevation peaks looked so lush and verdant in early June.
Let’s go through the most memorable mountain hikes in Slovenia (and one awesome climb!) that we explored together this spring.
Following the weeks of mountaineering in winter conditions, I wanted the past week to be different. Warm, pleasant and colorful. As it happens, our little green country is fortunate to have three different types of climate, and when the first flowers only start to bud in one place, spring is already in full swing in another place.
Barring some occasional drizzles, late winter was pretty dry not leaving nature as spectacular for wildflowers as usual. But since nature is slowly awakening as the proverbial rainy month has only just started, flower lovers can already see the first spring blooms in a few sites. Here are three beautiful spring hikes in Slovenia, located in three completely different parts of the country, and are known for their flower booms in early spring. I visited all three last week and each is very different, yet wonderful in its uniqueness. Enjoy!
Exploring Slovenia’s best spring hikes:
Stunning Julian Alps
Golica and endless fields of daffodils
Fairytale hike in Karavanke
Velika Planina and crocuses
The mountain in Slovenia that has inadvertently captured my heart is neither Triglav nor any of the country’s other striking high peaks, but a relatively lowly peak whose height would easily betray its beauty. At 1,835 meters, it doesn’t stick out in the 120-km long Karavanke mountains like its neighboring 2,236-m Stol, yet it effortlessly steals the show, thanks to its booming fragrant flowers. The thick aromatic flowery smell fills the air as the light breeze strokes the wild daffodils left and right, and my heart melts at the sight of the early-morning sun cast glorious light on the rolling slopes, softly carpeted with wild daffodils. Yes, Golica truly is a spectacle of nature.
