Slovenia's hidden treasures – or a guide that tells you where not to go?
Well, let's have a look at you. I'm curious what's inside. I open the hard front cover, glance at the contents and shelve them for "maybe later", then focus on the first lines of the editorial. I don't even read the final paragraph. The last two sentences of the one before were more than enough for the magazine to lose my sympathy for good.
"We went looking for places that are just as beautiful and, for now, far less visited. We'll share Slovenia's hidden treasures with you!"
For now, far less visited! Which is why we wrote about them in this rag, which we're releasing into the world for free, offline and online. And so these secret places – whose wild solitude and distance from the crowds heading for the overhyped hotspots of thrill-hungry adventurers we enjoyed so much on our visit – will become known to thousands more people. With which we've done our own small bit to destroy the much-praised breathtaking atmosphere we describe to you in this issue.
No, I don't like today's conquest of the mountains by giving everything away – on the internet and beyond. Adventure is ceasing to exist. There's nothing left to discover. Searching for a hundred-year-old hunters' path, now vanishing under blueberry bushes and being pushed into oblivion by ever-thickening spruce growth, happens mostly by studying satellite images on Google Maps and clicking through search results.
In the past, the location of a small tin bivouac shelter was only ever guessed at from a dot on a paper map.
Today, plenty of links show you the route described in detail. Including the final unmarked stretch, where you need to pay close attention, bear slightly left at the big boulder split by a quartz vein and carry on in that direction for about a hundred metres. Otherwise the path might lead you too far and you'd be hunting for the bivouac for many long minutes.
Heaven forbid!
Finally a bit of excitement, spiced with the unpleasant uncertainty of whether, as dusk draws in, you'll end up – instead of on a flat bunk in the bivouac – curled up in your sleeping bag among limestone rocks that refuse to let you get comfortable, under the nearest overhanging boulder.
But no. There's no room for that these days. Adventure has to come instant, just add water.
Giving away the unknown isn't necessarily bad. As long as it happens by word of mouth. Among friends, or friends of friends. "Hey, I heard there are supposedly the foundations of some old shepherd's hut below the ridges or something? Do you know where it is?" ... "Sure, it's called Volárna. You have to turn off at the Vegeťák..." Here and there, blah blah blah. That way, the only people who reach the mountains and those last precious places, still carefully hidden from the crowds, are the ones truly ready to explore. Those who can find their own way and don't mind having their shins scraped by overgrown blueberry bushes for half a day and countless times crawling back in defeat under low spruce branches to the main path, because the directions from a retired former mountain rescuer turned out to be a product of the time he was last there, leading the search for a lost Polish hiker.
But mass disclosure of the unknown brings another big problem, besides stealing the atmosphere of the mountains' hidden treasures.
It often brings unprepared people into the mountains.
People unable to deal with unexpected problems the magazine didn't mention. The line of ascent was clearly laid out. But a slope covered by a huge snowfield – a leftover from the last heavy winter – puts an obstacle in their way that nobody counted on. A slip could be fatal. An ice axe? They haven't got one. And the trouble doesn't end there. Fog has swallowed all the cairns marking the safe route in its mysterious depths, and the right direction becomes a big unknown in the grey wilderness. The internet just said: "Follow the cairns." Map? Compass? Haven't got those either. From afar, an ominous rumble carries through the thickening air, and within half an hour come crashes as if the whole sky were about to fall. Sheets of rain show no mercy. Suddenly it's snowing, and the already dark sky loses all its light as time goes on. How will they survive the night? A bivvy bag? A down jacket? Warm gloves? Haven't got them.
Yes, I picked an extreme case. And it really takes much less for internet-based preparation to turn into an unpleasant experience at the very least. "It says it's protected by a steel cable, but easily doable without clipping in. So we won't even bother renting via ferrata sets, right?" At that moment, lulled by the information available, they no longer take into account the vertigo one of them suffers from. They unintentionally overlook 26 August 2011 as the article's publication date. And reassured by the line "there was no need to clip in at all", it doesn't occur to them that in May a ferrata at 2,000 metres can hold quite a lot of snow, which changes the rules of the game completely.
Maybe if they'd planned with common sense instead of internet articles, they'd have taken gear to match their abilities.
Or not set out on such a bold venture at all.
Sadly, today's almost unbelievably easy access to information, combined with the relentless efforts of outdoor brands, TV channels and all sorts of other entrepreneurs to grab their slice of the growing mountain industry – yes, we really can call it an industry now – is flooding the mountains with people who are nowhere near ready for their pitfalls. Not to mention the lack of respect for nature itself.
"Experience it with us!"
"Get ready to head out!"
"Mountains of experiences!"
That's what many proclaim to the world in an effort to boost the green figures in their year-end accounts. But the other half of the message never goes out on air. And not even a jacket crammed with the latest technology, a super-clever belay device with a patent pending or an avalanche-risk app will protect anyone from the pitfalls of the mountains. Only experience and humility can do that. But nobody talks about that.
Giving away the unknown does no good to anything. There are more and more people, and with growing bank balances comes a growing hunger for experiences. The mountains are suffering. Just stand at the Hvězda park-and-ride above the spa town of Karlova Studánka on a sunny weekend morning and then – if you even fit on the bus – carry on with the crowd to the summit of Moravia's highest mountain. And is that what we want to do to those hidden treasures too, whether in Slovenia, the Jeseníky Mountains or still-exotic Georgia?
I decided long ago not to name specific places in my articles, and the smallest geographical unit I use is the name of the mountain range. I leave the rest shrouded in mystery. I describe only emotions and atmosphere. And I believe that's the right thing to do.
Let everyone find their own way into the mountains. Step by step. Let them head up first with an experienced friend, or join a climbing club. Let them learn about all the possible risks, navigation, essential gear and, above all, respect for nature.
And once they're prepared like that, the mountains will gradually open up to them.
That way we'll protect both the mountains and ourselves.
I climb mountains. I write about mountains. I photograph mountains. And I always come back happy. It's written in my name, after all.
