It's Wednesday. The kids have endured a long climb to Čukla and the Hvadnik via ferrata. I think they're ready for Triglav too. I call the good elf Vinkot from Trenta and arrange for him to make our journey a little easier. We prepare all the equipment for the hike, lots of drinks and food. We're already loading everything into the car. We're going to bed early. I have a hard time falling asleep at night, I'm restless about how we're going to do...
Thursday. D-Day. The alarm clock rings at 4:30. We just get dressed, pee, wash up, and put the baby in the car and head towards Zadnjica. At 5:30 we are in Zadnjica. We pick up the elf Vinko in the car and drive to the end of the Zadnjica valley (Vinko then takes our car to his home). This way we save ourselves more than an hour of walking through the valley. We start the climb. We eat sandwiches along the way. After just a few meters, Klara complains that she is cold. We fail to convince her that walking will warm her up, and we stop (to get dressed). From here it goes slowly, with begging , pleading, sweets, and one stop for food all the way to Dolič. We walk along the mulatto, which is beautiful, climbs slowly, but is steep in places, so we do not skimp on warnings "walk closer to the wall" etc. Once we see the hut, it becomes even easier on our legs. Then we start looking for military flowers and collect a whole bunch of them. After four hours of walking, we are at Dolič. The children immediately go to make an exhibition of flowers and play. We can barely call them to the table for lunch. We have walked 9 kilometers and gained 1200 meters in altitude. It is not even 11 o'clock. We eat and move to the hut. The sun is hiding, the mist is coming and blowing. We find a bench in the corner and the children take a refreshing nap. Vasja and I decide to head to the summit today, the first day (the original plan was to go the next day).
At 1 p.m. we are already on our way to the top. We empty our backpacks even earlier, leave the excess food in the children's backpacks, transfer the equipment to our backpacks and leave them in the hut. This way the two little ones continue their journey much easier. The first part from Dolič towards Triglav slowly climbs. The path is beautiful, marked, and groomed. Mist is gathering. There is no sun. It is cold at times. We see the wall every now and then. Soon we are below, in front of the scree, and we prepare to climb. The children are tied up, helmets up and off we go. First the pegs, then some ropes and then mostly just securing so that none of the children slip. The path is well groomed and quite smooth in places. Every now and then a few ropes and pegs.
My feelings are completely different from a good 10 years ago, when I first went to Triglav this way (I made my first ascent in 2001, almost 7 years old from Kredarica). Back then, like a mule, without children and with less responsibility. This time, however, with more fear and a focus on "I have to do this 200% so that we all get down alive and healthy". Climbing to the top took us an hour and a half. It wasn't the most pleasant, I'll say it that way. The fog covered the abyss for us and I found it easier and more enjoyable. Only every now and then did it open up a little so that we even realized where we were. Klara complained that she was hungry. We didn't stop much on this part of the route, not even for a drink. When we saw Aljaž's tower and some sun at the top - hallelujah! A few more steps and Urban and I reached the highest peak in Slovenia. Vasja and Klara were a few minutes behind us. Each of us protected one child, we had already studied this on the Hvadnik via ferrata and it worked out well for us. Vasja was also at the top for the first time. Next came the baptism, taking pictures and stamping mountain booklets. Then opening the backpack and feeding the hungry stomachs. Congratulations, kisses and just pure luck that we succeeded. I admit that I didn't really believe it. But that made me all the more proud of all of us. Even today, on Friday, as I write this, the fact that we got a five-year-old and a seven-year-old to the top of Slovenia is only now dawning on me. An achievement.
Miraculously, there was no wind at the top and we stayed for about half an hour. Then the realization that we were actually only halfway there. The real relief comes when we descend to the scree. The descent was accompanied by the pleas of "be focused", "step safely", "hold on to the wall", "follow me", etc. However, I had the feeling all the time that I was more aware of the danger than not only me (and Vasja). But what is a precipice for a seven-year-old when he doesn't even know the units of measurement (meters)? There was no sign of fear in either Klara or Urban. The descent was great, a little easier than the ascent because we weren't so out of breath. Soon we were unbuckling and putting our helmets in our backpacks and chatting with the Germans. We only met a few mountaineers, and there was no crowd at the top either, I don't know if there were 20 of us up there. I thought it was great. As a reward on the descent back to Dolič, we met three more ibex. Could it be any more beautiful?
We managed to climb Triglav in one day. The route from Dolič is considered the easiest technically. However, fewer mountaineers choose it because it requires a lot of altitude gain. We covered 16 kilometers and almost 2,000 altitude gain. We walked for 9 hours. NINE IN THE YEAR.
When we arrived at the hut, we were hungry and tired. We checked in, the hut was full of strangers, we got a really cozy room right in the attic (the kids were thrilled to sleep in the hut) and a great, tasty, hearty dinner. Each had their own meal: polenta and goulash, goulash with bread and a pancake for the lady mountaineer, and sausage with sauerkraut for the little mountaineer. We ate our fill, brushed our teeth (there is no running water on Dolič) and went to pee in the toilet on the štrbunk. Then we jumped into the mountain sheets and went to sleep. We slept like a topi . We haven't had such a good night's sleep in the hut yet. Only Urban sneezed at night and I woke up to cover him. We were in a room for 6, with two young girls next to us. No snoring. Peace, coolness and wool blankets. PERFECT. We slept well in the morning. We were in no hurry, because we "only" had to descend back into the valley.
We had half board in the hut (overnight stay + dinner + breakfast for 4 people cost us approx. €110). We had breakfast around 7:30 and at 8:30 we started descending back to the valley. The morning was cold and cloudy. Dressed in everything we had with us, we started walking on the mule track back to Zadnjica. For the child, the greatest happiness was walking past patches of snow. And watching the mountaineers, the ants , who were just climbing. Countless bends, the first signal caught and from the high mountains we returned back to civilization with a special achievement.