Tales from the Slovenian Misery Trail
By Tom Russell
This time I wasn’t afraid. Starting the Slovenian Mountain Trail, it felt like coming home. I was returning to a place I belonged, to a place I understood. The trail. The trail is where I go to heal. Life needs to be lived, and this is where I can do just that.
Haunted by a sense of nostalgia, I realised I’d been here before. Two years ago, I stood here alone as I set off across the Balkans. I was in the same place, but now I was a different person. I was no longer alone. Dan, Joe and I were embarking on this 600 km journey across the Julian Alps.
I lay curled under my tarp, unable to sleep; I never do on the first night. So much lay ahead of us, all of it unknown. Knowing nothing about the future meant that everything was possible. That’s the beauty of adventuring into the unknown – it opens the pure possibility of life.
For a week we were shrouded in the Slovenian forest. Days spent in the rain, cold and wet, wearing dishwashing gloves to warm my hands. Each day, the snowy mountains that loomed across the horizon were getting closer and closer. A record early snowfall had now made a gnarly route even gnarlier. We ignored the fact we had zero snow gear and in denial simply kept walking. Each day the sole goal of existence was to walk. The snow was an issue for the future, we simply had to live for the needs of the day.
I felt happy. Usually on a thru hike my days are this mental rollercoaster, bouncing between despair and ecstasy. But here I’ve felt this steady contentment, some form of peace. There hasn’t been this grand suffering as in previous times. In the past, I suffered from my idealism. Idealising the suffering of solitude, of having no shackles, believing in the purity of the self, I left people I loved. I drowned in the void that surrounds the lonesome walker. It was always optional, driven by the desire to suffer. The need to suffer. How many days have I spent crippled by the loneliness of this romantic nightmare? I no longer feel this need. I think it’s taken these tears to nourish the white flower that grows in my often black and broken heart. In a cruel and twisted way, it’s taught me the need for others.
Most of the mountain huts were now shut due to the snow. We would often curl up on the hut porches to shelter from the rain. The Slovenian Misery Trail. That’s what Dan and Joe had started to call it. At camp one night we talked about quitting. It made complete sense. Walking in the cold rain was miserable and the snow was going to be dangerous to say the least. The idea of quitting terrified me because I felt like I had nothing to go back to. I felt the crippling ache of losing people who used to define your life. I even felt separate from Dan and Joe. I was an outcast to their brotherly bond. It was too cold to fall asleep, shivering as I let the tears wash the dirt off my face.
In the morning, we bailed off the trail. Failed hitch after failed hitch, we walked in silence. We had no clue where we were going but as long as it was out of the rain we didn’t care.
We ended up getting a ride from a guy driving to Tolmin, so that’s where we were headed. As we drove out of the hills, with music playing from the radio, the sun started to shine. In the mirror I could see Dan and Joe smiling, softly singing in the back.
It turns out our new friend knew these mountains well and he offered to help us come up with a plan. Map in hand, he called up his friend who worked in the Mountain Rescue. In a few days’ time there was going to be a good weather window, which should give us enough time to get through the highest mountains. There was still plenty of fresh snow so we planned plenty of lower elevation alternates that we could bail onto. Our psyche was back. And so, we rested at a campsite, ate and even showered. That man did more for us than he will ever know. He gave us hope and belief. The trail always provides.
Through everything we finally arrived at the foot of the mountains. Through the rain, through tears, through the cold and now through the mountains and snow. That is the nature of a thru hike – to go through it all.
We climbed up along a crystal river. It was brutally steep climbing, but that was nothing compared to our excitement. Our excitement to get up high into the alpine, to drown in the vastness. We eventually broke through the tree line. All around were towering masses of rock, masters in a world of flux. Shards of rock that seemed to cut across the sky. Limestone faces extended all around that burned bright in the sun, blinding me, forcing me to shield my eyes from their purity. As I climbed up through rocky outcrops, I encountered the first of the snow. Above, I could see Dan and Joe about to reach the shelter. Looking up at them, two figures seemingly dancing along the land, I started to cry. Smiling with tears streaming, I spun around trying to take everything in. Refusing to let anything slip by. I knew then that all the suffering was nothing compared to the beauty I’ve experienced. I was back home in the mountains.
We piled into the emergency shelter. Inside were mattresses and blankets, a cosy den. Like kids we ran around the giant boulder field nearby. Climbing the various lines we could see, playing till the sun set where we retreated inside the shelter. We listened to the howling of the wind while we were wrapped up inside. We talked and laughed until the warmth and comfort of sleep welcomed us.
I opened the shelter door to the sun starting to rise over the massif opposite us. Distant peaks lit up in a pink haze. Joe and I set off to summit Jalovec. Dan sensibly was staying behind as he didn’t want to push the risks. Joe and I established that our goal was to simply have fun and that we were completely okay with the likelihood of not reaching the summit. We knew it was going to be spicy. We hopped through boulder fields and up scree slopes. With our harnesses on we started ascending through some via ferrata sections, thankful for the protection given the exposure. Slowly we climbed higher. Quickly the route became covered in snow. Without any crampons or axes slipping on the snow would mean a high chance of a death fall. We decided to quest up off route on rock. We were both rock climbers, so we felt it was safer, but it quickly got sketchy. Slab climbing in no fall territory, looking down below at hundreds of metres of cliff below. Any foot slip and you were plummeting down. Joe could tell I was starting to struggle and lose my head. My leg at times doing a full ‘Elvis leg’. Joe guiding me through the beta when I got cruxed out.
We eventually got completely snowed out and decided that was high enough. We stood for a while marvelling at everything around us. With all the recent snow there was not a soul anywhere on these mountains. It was just us. The space to think. To feel. To live. To revel. ‘The ecstatic joy of pure being’. Being able to share these experiences is what it is all about. To be in these places with people you care about, doing things you love. These moments you can’t convey to other people. Moments you can never fully relive. Moments I’ll always look back on in awe, no matter how old I become. As I stood there, I knew that when I die I’ll smile, knowing that I’ve felt beauty that is inconceivable, that no words could ever convey.
It was now just the simple task of downclimbing everything we had just quested up. Dan was waiting for us at the bottom, nervously debating at what point he should call mountain rescue.
Packing up our stuff a fight broke out between Dan and Joe over water. Something so minor quickly divided us. In silence we set off and bombed it down knowing we had a lot of distance to cover that day. The goal was to reach a hut on the other side of a big technical pass.
Joe and I didn’t see Dan for most of the day. I think it was easier for him to be apart from us than to be with us. He had lived in solitude for the last two months hiking across the Alps. Joe and I kept getting annoyed with his selfishness, but I knew he was just learning how to deal with people again. He was a solitary creature being forced into a herd.
By evening we began the final ascent to the pass. We climbed up scree as ibex pranced above us. In an ocean of rock, we tried to work out where the pass was. Jagged ridgelines all around us broken up by towering spires. Dan was nowhere to be seen, and the terrain was getting sketchier and sketchier. We climbed across exposed wet rock, up vertical sections pulling onto steel cables while my feet slipped on ice. We’d been following Dan’s footprints but now we hadn’t seen any for a while. I could see Joe’s uneasiness growing. His fear of seeing Dan’s body lying somewhere down below, somewhere we would never find.
The last beams of light were staggered across the various ridgelines, cutting shadows across the land. We were post-holing up to our knees in fresh snow. I was thankful for the mist, not being able to see the drop below. Being in the mountains it’s hard not to experience ego death. You feel so small in the immensity of it all. You feel so insignificant and yet you feel so much.
Finally, we made it to the top and I could see Dan sitting there. My joy at him being alive quickly wore off and soon we were all shouting at each other. But the setting sun cut our fight short. The threat of darkness and the need to get down was more important. Only a few minutes into the descent, the only light was from our head torches. After some snow fields and via ferrata, we saw the distant light of the hut. It started to rain, and the distant glow never looked so welcoming. The light was getting closer and closer. We made it. The hut warden was shocked when he asked where we came from. Turns out we were the only people to have made it through that pass in the snow. A testament to our stupidity. Our fighting was irrelevant compared to the joy of a fire and a hot bowl of goulash.
The landscape we had been passing through was of another world. A rough wilderness where beauty is the most common of things. I would stop and try to look all around, but I couldn’t absorb it all. It was everywhere and yet I couldn’t hold onto any of it. I was just passing through. I knew I would wake up the next day and not be able to truly remember any of it. It existed only in the now. Beauty only exists in the present. Like everything, it will pass, but I think that’s okay. Leaving those moments as moments. No matter how much you want to, you can’t hold onto any of it. If you try to hold on forever, you’ll drown in memories of the past. I think this is the nature of everything. Relationships and times of your life can’t always be forever, but that doesn’t take away their significance or beauty. These times with people can burn like fireworks exploding against the dark sky, but fireworks can’t burn forever. If it was forever, it would be but a mere candle.
We stood at the base of Triglav. A helicopter was flying around looking for the body of a hiker who had died up here. With all the snow we never thought we would be here, but here we were staring up at its three peaks, its crown. The tallest mountains in Slovenia. The plan was to go from a hut on one side, then to move up and over to a hut on the other side. We began pushing up. I could see a woman laugh at Dan as he passed her in his unbuttoned shirt, shorts and trainers, while she had mountaineering boots, crampons, jackets, helmets and ice axes. As I reached her, she said “whenever there’s one crazy there’s always another not too far away.”
Things quickly got technical. The rock and snow fields were steep with plenty of via ferrata. We made our way up. All three of us stood at the top. We embraced in celebration. Despite everything we made it to the highest point of the route. In a sea of snow, here we were looking down on the world below. The sun was starting to set and all around us lay layers of purple, blue and yellow. Along the horizon you could see the curvature of the earth. This beautiful, beautiful world.
The temperature was beginning to drop as we began the descent. The hut soon came into view and with it the dream of warmth. This dream was interrupted as all of a sudden we cliffed out. Standing on a snowy ledge clipped into a cable, we looked around. Below a vertical drop, we could make out some cables. We had no rope and to get there would require a hail mary jump down the snowy drop while trying to catch the cable. In all likelihood we would be plummeting down into the abyss below. We’d made it so far to get here, but we all knew we were seriously close to the line. Joe made the call not to go any further. He suggested we go back up a bit and bivy up there for the night. Things would get dangerously cold if we slept up here, so I made the heartbreaking suggestion to retrace our steps and go back down the other side. Back over the top of everything we had just climbed.
In the pitch of darkness, we put on some layers and turned on our head torches. We looked at each other with sombre eyes, knowing we had to lock in. This wasn’t a game and we knew there would be no room for mistakes. We climbed back up through snowy chutes, traversing icy rock, everything we had just done but now in the dark. We were taking our time and making smart decisions. It was already dark so there was no need to rush, it made no difference. The only focus was to make it down alive. With the temperature drop, the snow was freshly frozen which made the descent easier, being able to kick in solid boot packs. The light from my head torch was slowly dimming until it died. This wasn’t the best time for that. I slotted in the middle between Dan and Joe, desperately trying to occupy the little bubble of light around them.
It got scary. Real scary. But you didn’t have room to let fear into your head. You couldn’t let it mess with you. You couldn’t let it distract you. You had to be there. I was wholly there. To survive you had to be present. If you came out of that moment it would be over. This intensity of living. Existing in the space between life and death, everything dissolves away apart from the sole need to live. Moments so pure, you could die for.
We made it. We made it down. A group outside the hut had been watching the dots from our headlamps descend down in anticipation of the worst. I’ve never hugged anyone so tight as we collapsed onto the ground. It was only now that I could feel the amount of adrenaline in my body. I hadn’t noticed the stars but the whole night sky was dancing with them. “You can only know the value of life when you are that close to losing it”, Joe said. I lay listening to my heart beating. I felt the value of being alive and the value of others. I felt so happy to be lying next to them. To not be alone. To feel the sense of brotherhood between us all. Love gets in the way of death, for love is life. It’s for love that I did not want to die.
The next day we quit. We got a hitch to town from a circus fire dancer and got a bus to Lake Bled. We’d had our fair share of adventure. With the weather window being over, why suffer more when we didn’t have to?
Walking around Bled I felt nothing. From the peace of the mountains to this chaos. All these tourists had come to see how beautiful this lake was but to me it was nothing. Nothing compared to the beauty of the mountains. To the peace of the mountains. A fall from grace. We felt aimless. Normal civilisation wasn’t meant for us. Stressed and anxious we wandered around, but it wasn’t long before with a grin I proposed we got back on the SMT.
And so, we walked. Three Dharma bums partaking in the rucksack revolution. Through the rain and cold we placed foot after foot. Our feet wrinkled from the river-like trail. Nights spent shivering for warmth, sneaking into firewood sheds. Having quit the trail, everything now felt like a gift. I had accepted that the trail was over and so none of this we were meant to experience. Everything we passed by now felt special. These were miles I was never meant to walk. There was no rush because we no longer had a goal. There was no destination. No goal but to live, and with that came a feeling of immense freedom.
One of the last nights on trail we barricaded ourselves on this porch. We flipped a table to block an approaching storm. We each had our own form of protection. Dan had strung up his tent horizontally, Joe was lying under a plank of wood, and I was wrapped in my plastic groundsheet. Despite my burrito I was completely soaked and spent the night shivering feeling hypothermic, but I’ll always look back on this night and smile. We lay there in the rain singing. Singing ‘So rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel.’ A song about a man traveling home to see his lover. Initially it saddened me. I no longer had someone I loved to go back to, and the idea of home felt alien. This strange abandonment or aimlessness. But I now felt weirdly okay with that. Despite this loneliness, I felt love for Dan and Joe, love for friends elsewhere, love for this life. I think I agree with something Joe said, that love is the only real thing in this world. I think it’s the only thing that matters. It’s the most priceless treasure in the world, and with it the whole of life lies open.
With the leaves now falling from the trees, our time on the Slovenian Mountain Trail came to an end. Together we’d carried the fire across Slovenia. This trail taught me that it is only because of others that my fire burns bright. Mad to live knowing that I don’t have all the time in the world, only that which I’m given and while I’m alive I intend to live and to love. There have been times where I’ve lost that. But I now feel a duty to love, because when you lose that you lose everything. There is no life but in love.