 Poster: A snowHead
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Just back from a great long weekend trip to Slovenia  - our first visit there.
Fri 7th March:
Landed at Ljubljana late morning.
Picked up hire car and drove a few km for a quick look round the old town of Kranj and a bite to eat. Very pleasant.
After lunch, drove to the nearby ski area of Krvavec - Slovenia's biggest (and highest) area, with (a mere) 20 odd km of piste and slopes up to about 2000m.
Bluebird weather and, despite very full car parks, no queues and fairly quiet slopes.
One fast quad, otherwise all slow chairs. Soft snow in the warm sun and a pretty decent ski area, with a vertical of about 400m.
Got a 2 hour lift ticket (we skied from 2pm) for €21.
Sat 8th March:
From our apartment in Bled (very scenic lake but town nothing spectacular) we drove 25 mins to Vogel ski area, on the shore of the lovely Lake Bohinj. A very scenic drive, with snow covered valleys once we were out of Bled. Another bluebird day.
The skiing is accessed by a cable car - we arrived at 8.30am and queued for 70 mins  to get up the mountain. Vogel describes itself as 'Like a fairytale' - which is why the mountain access can can best be described as Grimm....
Once up, the views are spectacular and the ski area is small. Although there is one fast quad, the lift system is rather antiquated and includes slow drags and a Glencoe-style single seat chair (from 1963) to the top of the mountain. Queues were manageable at 5-10 mins and the slopes were surprisingly quiet (maybe because everyone was in lift queues?). Overall, the snow was pretty decent, although slick in a few trafficked areas, and there was a vertical drop of 600m (the run to the valley - which would have meant another 3-400m of vertical was closed). The top of the ski area is at 1800m.
After lunch. the queues died down a lot and we had the place almost to ourselves. There was a queue of only about 5 mins to get down in the cable car at the end of the day.
A day ticket cost €29 - but we were given a voucher by someone in the car park for a special offer of x2 tickets and x2 lunches on the mountain for €42 - that'll do nicely  .
A great day's skiing despite the initial queue to get up the mountain.
Sun 9th March:
We had planned to ski at Kranjska Gora but had heard that there was World Cup racing on and that the place would be mobbed. Change of plan needed. Fortunately we'd picked up a Guide to Slovenian Skiing at the airport - and headed for Cerkno, about 80km away from our Bled accommodation.
We took the route over the mountains, which was slow but spectacular and made for a very interesting drive - hairpin bends, singletrack and killer drops....with no barriers  .
En route, we hardly saw any snow and were a bit concerned at to what we'd find. Still no snow in sight as we climbed to the parking in very warm weather (with more blue skies). No need to worry though, there was (man made) snow to the bottom station at 1000m, and very good cover higher up, with the skiing topping out at 1400m.
It's a great ski area - small, as is the Slovenian way, but three fast quads, no queues, great cruising skiing, all on tree runs, and quiet slopes. Gorgeous mountain restaurant at the top too.
Snow softened throughout the day to spring mush by early afternoon - it was 15C  when we skied down to the car.
Mon 10th March:
Hmmm.....What to do when your flight goes at 11.15am and there's a ski area (Krvavec) only 10km/15 mins from the airport? Possibly our most audacious ski day (well at least since we went up the glacier at Kaprun at closing time for one run....) went as follows:
- Arrived at the ski area at 08.00am.
- Bought 2-hour tickets for €21.
- In gondola (for 10 min ride up to the slopes) at 08.15am.
- Skied from 08.25am to 09.25 am - minimal queueing and lapping of fast quad for over 1900m of vertical. We felt like we'd had a proper ski - and it was a bit better than an hour at Snozone.
- Pulled away from the skiing at 09.45am.
- Airport at 10.00am.
- Packed skis and bags in car hire garage.
- Dropped luggage at bag drop at 10.15am.
- Changed out of ski kit once we cleared security.
All in all a fantastic holiday - a beautiful country, some nice skiing and very cheap prices (large beer €2.50, pizza €6, three course Chinese €10). Not recommended if you need 250km of piste to have a good time - but we're easily pleased and just love to ski (any) new places. For our next non-mainstream destination, we could be thinking Slovakia or Macedonia.....
And here are some photos of the trip:
Krvavec:
Vogel (Lake Bohinj):
Vogel skiing:
En route to Cerkno:
Cerkno skiing:
Ljubljana Airport in centre of photo; Krvavec skiing on nearest mountain directly behind airport:
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Very interesting - we get too few reports of areas off the beaten track for UK skiers. 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Good effort - especially on the last day!
I've a soft spot for Slovenia ever since we toured there by bike some 20 years ago. Certainly a beautiful country with something like 70% still covered in forest. We had a great time. It was just after Yugoslavia fell apart and everyone seemed very keen to rub along together. We camped in Kranjska Gora one night and then by Lake Bohinj. Bled looked nice but a bit too chocolate boxey. Then we went south over the mountains - perhaps by the same road as you. We've never skied there though - yet.
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| Quote: |
| Certainly a beautiful country with something like 70% still covered in forest |
I had an eye on Slovenia's weather throughout February (they'd had a poor winter snow-wise). I don't know if you saw this - as there was little coverage in the UK - but they had devastating winter weather that month. The army and emergency services were under massive strain to deal with a virtual state of emergency, with power lines down etc etc. As a result, I read when we were there that 40% of the nation's forests had been destroyed. We saw some evidence of that, with lots of big trees by the roadside just snapped in half.... 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Thanks for the interesting report. Maybe somewhere I should try.
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Great report thank you for posting, visited a few of those places in summer, really liked the Slovenians, very nice intelligent people, women were particularly pleasing! Good mountain culture there so might have to try and get out for some hut to hut off piste.
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Looks really nice. I haven't been back to the old Yugoslavia since about 1981. Perhaps a winter rather than summer visit is in order.
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