An Idea That Stuck in My Head
The Steiner Alps are home to some of the most beautiful places I know. I come from Carinthia, and Slovenia somehow feels like my second home. I absolutely love being there. So naturally, I’ve spent a lot of time there. Mostly for individual peaks, but once also for a two-day traverse with Simon. Back then, we stayed at the Skuta Bivouac. It was still a bit of a hidden gem at the time, but by now it has become very well known and it’s almost impossible to have the place to yourself.
The two-day traverse was already challenging back then, but somewhere along the way, the idea started forming in my head that one day I wanted to climb all the peaks and do the entire traverse in one go.
Two years later, the time had finally come! We had just returned home from our Sardinia-Corsica holiday, fit and motivated. The next morning at breakfast, I decided: Tomorrow is the perfect day for the complete Steiner Alps traverse. There was just one problem: My ankle was still hurting quite badly because I had injured the ligaments while running in Corsica. The problem is, once I get a goal or a mission into my head, I have to do it straight away. So I taped my foot as tightly as I could and tested at home how well I could walk in my trail shoes. It hurt, but it was bearable.
So I decided to go for it. I packed everything as minimally as possible, still thinking I would do it alone. Okay, maybe Kili is spontaneous enough to join, I thought.
I called him, and 15 minutes later we had a plan:
He came to Wolfsberg that same day. In the evening, we drove to Slovenia so we could start the adventure at 4:45 the next morning. Said and done. That evening, we ate a huge pot of poppy seed noodles with apple sauce in the car and crawled into bed, a little nervous but very excited.
From Peak to Peak
The alarm went off at 04:15 in the Logar Valley. After a quick breakfast, we set off in the dark towards our first summit, Ojstrica. We moved quickly and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise with our first sports gel. After that, the normal hiking trail finally turned into rocky scrambling terrain. After 2h15’, we reached the summit and had completed the longest climb of the day, around 1,490 metres of elevation gain. Without much of a break, we continued towards Lučka Baba, which we reached after 3.5 hours. From there, we headed up Planjava (3h54’), where it was time for the next gel break.
Unfortunately, one of the gels exploded in Kili’s running pack, and by 09:00 in the morning everything was already completely sticky ... but whatever!
Then we descended towards the hut at Kamniško sedlo, which we reached after 4h47’. Here, for the first time, we could actually run properly. We refuelled with some Coke. By now our mouths were completely sticky from all the sugar, but we knew we would still need it. We enjoyed the short break. The less demanding part was over now, and the exciting part was waiting for us. We reached the next summit, Brana, after 5h37’.
At the summit, we chatted with two Carinthians who couldn’t quite understand what we had planned for ourselves that day. We didn’t hang around for long and continued straight away. After descending from Brana, things started getting really exposed. The trail had a constant risk of falling and was therefore partly protected with steel cables and metal pins.
From here on, full concentration was required! After 6h52’ and another 1,200 metres of elevation gain, we stood on the summit of Turska Gora. We considered whether to include Kranjska Rinka or skip it, as the peak sits slightly off to the side and wasn’t directly on our line. But for the sake of completeness, and because we were still doing well on time, we decided to include this summit too.
Along the extremely exposed ridge, it was once again time for full focus. We also started noticing that we were getting a little tired and that concentrating was becoming increasingly difficult.
After 8h (3,000 metres of elevation gain), we reached Kranjska Rinka.
Luckily, another short section followed where we didn’t need to use our brains quite so much.
We descended from Kranjska Rinka and traversed towards Skuta before reaching the marked trail. On the way up, a group of Slovenians stopped us and tried to make it clear that we wouldn’t make it up Skuta in our trail shoes. They probably meant well.
The climb up Skuta is my favourite section of the tour: sometimes slightly slabby and really enjoyable scrambling. The elevation gain flew by, and after 9h10’ we stood on the summit of Skuta. There, we ate a big portion of pasta with pesto that we had carried with us. One of our best decisions!
Finally, something other than gels!
The next summit was the 2,558-metre Grintovec, the highest mountain in the Steiner Alps. On the way there, we found out that the section towards Jezerska Kočna, the westernmost summit, was still closed (just as it had been two years earlier), which unfortunately meant that we couldn’t continue west from Grintovec.
We reached the highest point of the day after 10h47’.
The Long Way Back
By now, stopping was becoming torture because once we stopped, our tired legs almost didn’t want to start moving again. Because the route was closed due to rockfall, we descended from Grintovec the same way we had come and then went down through a “wall” towards Češka Koča na Spodnjih Ravneh, the hut in the Matkov kot valley. The descent was quite exposed again, and it took us two hours to descend the 1,000 metres. The hut was still open at 6 pm, and we drank the most delicious drink in Slovenia, Isotonic Radler. We also finished the rest of our pasta and had some cake.
It was Kili’s first time in the Steiner Alps, so he had no idea what was waiting for us on the next climb. I, on the other hand, already knew what was coming. I remembered the next section from last time as extremely exhausting and tedious. We were now in a side valley west of the Logar Valley, which meant we had to climb almost another 800 metres. The first part was a fairly long but easy via ferrata through a small gorge.
Luckily, it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. Slowly, the sun began to set and it started getting dark. We couldn’t really enjoy the beautiful sunset anymore because the tiredness was catching up with us and every step was becoming a struggle. Once we reached the saddle, another 1,145 metres of descent in the dark were waiting for us. With every bigger step, my knee almost gave way because my thigh muscles simply weren’t working anymore. I became very, very tired and slipped into my vegetative mode. Unfortunately, that made me slower and slower. Kili walked a little ahead, which was good, because otherwise I would have become even slower. At least the beam of his headlamp motivated me to keep moving.
Whenever I kept my eyes closed for even slightly longer than a blink, I felt like I was going to fall asleep. At some point, I caught up with Kili, who was complaining about knee pain. His knee had already been a little sore before the tour ...
After what felt like an eternity, we finally reached the asphalt road and walked the last few kilometres to the car in step, without saying much, almost in a trance.
The watch stopped at 17h33’, 37.45 km and 4,553 metres of elevation gain.
Done
We didn’t eat much more because we were simply far too tired. Still, we really wanted to wash ourselves a little in the stream. I sat down in the water and my legs immediately started cramping from even the slightest tension in the cold water. So I quickly gave up on washing.
Before going to sleep, Kili took a painkiller for his knee. I didn’t want to take one, which I later regretted. Kili slept deeply, while my legs hurt so much that sleep was completely out of the question. It wasn’t until the next day that we really realised what we had achieved together, and I could finally consider this project, which had been stuck in my head for such a long time, complete. To stand on almost all the summits of the Steiner Alps in a single day. We were still super tired, but also super happy!
