Triglav National Park

Triglav National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Triglav is Slovenia's only national park, the Julian Alps between Bled, Kranjska Gora and Bovec, and it is sold from Ljubljana and Bled as day tours and from the valleys as activities. The day tours from Ljubljana and Bled drive the Vršič pass, the highest road in the country with its fifty hairpins, into the Soča valley, stopping at the Russian chapel, the source of the Soča, the Great Soča gorge and Bovec, with a walk to a waterfall or the Tolmin gorges and, in the eastern versions, the Vintgar gorge and Lake Bohinj; they see the park from the road with a couple of short walks and are the option for visitors without a car, and the winter versions do the same with snow on the pass closed and the Bohinj side instead.

From Bled and Bohinj, the guided hikes climb to the Seven Lakes valley or the Savica waterfall and the e-bike tours ride the Bohinj and the Radovna valleys; from Bovec, the rafting and kayaking on the Soča, the canyoning in the side gorges and the zip lines are the park's adventure side. The Triglav summit climb, two days with a night in a hut and a guide for the exposed sections, is sold by the mountain guides of Bohinj and Kranjska Gora. The park has no entrance fee; the Vintgar gorge, the Savica waterfall, the Tolmin gorges and the Vogel cable car are tickets. Independent visitors need a car or the summer buses from Bled and Bohinj; the huts book out in August.

Visiting Triglav National Park: what you will see

The park was created in its present form in 1981, with its first core in the Seven Lakes valley in 1924, and it covers about 840 square kilometres of the Julian Alps in the north-west of Slovenia, four per cent of the country, around Mount Triglav at 2,864 metres, the national symbol on the flag, from which the valleys radiate to two seas: the Soča to the Adriatic and the Sava to the Black Sea. The park is limestone, with the peaks, the screes, the karst plateaux of the Komna and the Pokljuka and the gorges cut by rivers of an unreal blue-green, and the two sides differ: the Sava side has Lake Bohinj, a glacial lake under the Komna cliffs with the Savica waterfall at its head and the Vogel cable car above it, the Pokljuka plateau's forests and the Vintgar gorge near Bled, where the Radovna river runs through a slot on wooden walkways;

the Soča side has the emerald river from its source below the Vršič pass through the gorges at Lepena and the Great Soča gorge to Bovec and the Tolmin gorges, with the Kobarid museum of the First World War's Isonzo front, which was fought in these mountains, at the park's edge. The Triglav Lakes valley, a chain of seven lakes in a high valley of larches and limestone, is the classic hut-to-hut walk, and the Triglav summit, climbed by most Slovenes at least once as a duty, needs a head for the fixed cables of the final ridge. The park has chamois, ibex reintroduced to the Julians, marmots, golden eagles, the alpine salamander and the bears that wander in from the south, and the Triglav rose, the Zois's bellflower and the edelweiss in the rocks; the Trenta valley's alpine garden has them all. The pastures of the Bohinj cheesemakers and the Trenta and Bavšica farms are the human park.

Triglav National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times; the Vršič pass road is closed by snow from about November to April, and the huts are open from June to September. July and August are the walking season, with warm days, afternoon storms and the huts and the Soča valley full; June has snow on the high passes and the flowers below; September is the best month, with clear skies, empty huts and the larches turning in the last week;

winter brings skiing at Vogel and Kranjska Gora, snowshoeing on the Pokljuka and ice on the gorges, which close. Walk the Vintgar gorge early before the coaches. Allow two days for both sides by road, a week for the walking. Bled and Bohinj are the eastern bases, Bovec the western, and Ljubljana is an hour from Bled.