You make your own way to your hotel in central Ljubljana, which is one of the smallest and greenest capital cities in Europe and takes about an afternoon to fall for. The old town is car-free, the Ljubljanica river runs through the middle of it, and there are more cafe terraces on the water than seems reasonable for a city of 300,000.

Hike up to the castle hill for the best view over the whole city, cross the three bridges, and have a look round the open-air food market. The oldest part of town sits just below the castle, and the newer part spreads out across the bridges over the river, from the Dragon Bridge to the Cobbler’s Bridge. If you want to stretch your legs properly, the hills on the edge of the city are where the locals hike in the evenings, and you can reach them on foot from your hotel.

If your schedule allows it, come a day early. Arriving straight into day 2’s climb after a long flight is doing it the hard way.

• Accommodation: 3-star hotel in central Ljubljana, double or twin room with private bathroom
• Meals: none included

Pack your small bag this morning. A transfer takes you north from Ljubljana to the trailhead on the Pokljuka Plateau inside Triglav National Park, and your main luggage goes the other way, to your hotel at Lake Bled, where it waits until day 5.

Your hut to hut hiking in Slovenia starts gently, on quiet but well-trodden trails through dense spruce and larch forest with a steady incline. You come out onto secluded mountain meadows above Pokljuka, where the herders still work through the summer and will sell you freshly made dairy straight off the farm. It’s worth stopping for.

Then the trail lifts you into the open and the views arrive all at once. A full turn of the head gives you the Krma valley, the basins holding Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj, the Karavanke and the Kamnik-Savinja Alps across the way, and the mountains above Bohinj ahead of you.

You drop your pack at the hut where you’re sleeping, and the afternoon is yours for the lookouts along the ridge above it. There are several summits up there with different ascent and descent options, so you can pick one to match whatever your legs have left.

• Hiking today: 9 km (5.6 miles), 730 m (2,395 ft) ascent, 400 m (1,312 ft) descent, about 5 hours, plus the optional ridge summits
• Accommodation: mountain hut, shared room of 2 to 20 beds, shared washroom
• Meals: breakfast and dinner

Today you head deeper into Triglav National Park, hiking west into the central Julian Alps, and spend most of the day on single trails running along the mountainsides rather than over the tops of them. Limestone walls above you, quiet meadows below, and side trails off the route to nearby peaks if you want them, several of which give you the clean straight-on view of Mt. Triglav.

The best stretch comes right at the end. Just before the Vodnik hut on Velo Polje, the trail crosses the southern slopes of Mt. Tosc, and from there you can see the whole way out to the mountains standing over the Soča river.

Velo Polje itself is a working alpine pasture with a small cheese dairy on it, the last one on the old Bohinj cheese circuit. The hut sits on it, and at this one some rooms are private, so if you’d rather not share tonight, ask when you book.

If the summit of Mt. Triglav is on your list, this is where the route splits. Instead of stopping at the Vodnik hut you hike on for roughly 2 more hours and 500 m (1,640 ft) of climbing to the hut directly below the summit, and sleep there. The climb itself happens tomorrow morning.

• Hiking today: 11 km (6.8 miles), 650 m (2,133 ft) ascent, 400 m (1,312 ft) descent, about 5 hours
• Accommodation: mountain hut, private or shared rooms of 2, 4, 6 or 10 beds, shared washroom
• Meals: breakfast and dinner

The longest day of hiking in Triglav National Park, and the one people come back talking about.

The trail leaves the hut across Velo Polje, past the little cheese dairy under the summit of Mišelj Vrh, and then the green runs out. From here you’re on rock and gravel on bare alpine ground for hours, with edelweiss in the cracks if you look, and a decent chance of a herd of ibex watching you from somewhere above.

Then comes the Hribarice Plateau, the highest ground of the week, stripped back to pale stone and sinkholes. It’s known as the lunar surface, and you’ll often have it all to yourself.

From the plateau the trail tips over and descends into the Valley of the Seven Triglav Lakes, on a pleasantly undulating path with the lakes strung out below you. The valley is protected for its geology and its plant life and it shows: karst sinkholes and karren formations in the slabs, fossils, flowers that grow nowhere else. Swimming in the lakes isn’t allowed and it’s treated as an offense in the national park. They’re small, the water barely turns over through a dry summer, and sunscreen alone would do real damage to them. Tomorrow’s swim is a far better one anyway.

You finish at the hut beside Double Lake, with the afternoon to sit outside and do nothing at all.

If you’re climbing Mt. Triglav, 2,864 m (9,396 ft), today starts earlier and from the higher hut. Your IFMGA mountain guide meets you there first thing, kits you out and takes you up the cabled via ferrata route to the summit and back down to easier ground. You part company there and carry on into the Seven Lakes valley on your own, so the day gets considerably longer. More on that add-on in the Trip Info below.

• Hiking today: 14 km (8.7 miles), 700 m (2,297 ft) ascent, 750 m (2,461 ft) descent, about 7 hours, plus the optional summit
• Accommodation: mountain hut beside Double Lake, private or shared rooms of 2, 4, 6 or 10 beds, shared washroom
• Meals: breakfast and dinner

Start with coffee on the shore of Double Lake before anyone else is up. Mornings like that are the reason to sleep in the mountain huts of Slovenia.

Then the last stage of your Julian Alps hut to hut hike trades gravel and limestone for green. You come down through alpine pastures dotted with herders’ huts, farms and grazing livestock, and you start meeting hikers coming up the other way from Lake Bohinj for their own share of the hut food. It’s the most sociable stretch of the route and the easiest underfoot, which is just as well, because it’s a long descent: 1,600 m (5,249 ft) down over the course of the day. Poles earn their place here.

At the bottom is Lake Bohinj, sitting at the closed end of its own valley inside Triglav National Park, bigger and wilder and far quieter than Bled. Get in. Four days of mountain dust come off in about ten seconds and it’s the best swim in the country.

From the lake you take the bus to Lake Bled for your last two nights, where your main bag has been waiting since day 2. The bus ticket isn’t included, and it’s a few euros paid on board.

If you’d rather not leave Bohinj so quickly, say so when you book. We can add nights at the lake, where there’s paddling, biking, hiking, rock climbing, horseback riding and a hammock with your name on it, just ask.

• Hiking today: 16 km (9.9 miles), 755 m (2,477 ft) ascent, 1,600 m (5,249 ft) descent, about 6 hours
• Accommodation: 3-star hotel or local guesthouse at Lake Bled, double or twin room with private bathroom
• Meals: breakfast
• Not included: the bus ticket from Lake Bohinj to Lake Bled

Nothing in the diary. You wake up a few steps from Lake Bled, which is the most photographed place in Slovenia and earns it, so an early start buys you the island and the castle before the day-trippers arrive.

The obvious things are worth doing: Bled Castle on its cliff above the water, and Bled Island with its church in the middle of the lake. Row, swim or paddle out to the island if you fancy it. The legend goes that a widow had a new bell cast for the island church in memory of her husband, and that it sank into the lake on the way over.

If your legs still want work, the hike up through the Vintgar Gorge, where the trail is pinned to the rock above the river on wooden galleries, is the best short hike here, and the viewpoints on the hills above the lake line the island, the castle and the Karavanke range up in one frame. Otherwise there’s a bike ride through the villages behind the lake, or an afternoon of doing absolutely nothing by the water.

In the evening the town lights the lake, and some of the best restaurants in the country are a short stroll from your hotel. After three nights of hut food, that lands well.

• Accommodation: 3-star hotel or local guesthouse at Lake Bled
• Meals: breakfast

After a proper breakfast, take a moment to add it up. You hiked 50 km (31 miles) hut to hut across Triglav National Park, climbed 2,835 m (9,300 ft), slept in mountain huts under Mt. Triglav, crossed the Hribarice Plateau and hiked down through the Valley of the Seven Triglav Lakes to Lake Bohinj, carrying your own pack the whole way. That’s a real crossing of the Julian Alps, and you earned every view of it.

Steal one more swim in the lake before you go, and raise a coffee to yourself on the way out.

Ljubljana airport is about 30 minutes from Bled, so a lunchtime flight is comfortable from here. If you’d rather not rush, add a night at the lake or back in Ljubljana. Either can be arranged when you book.

• Meals: breakfast

We grade this tour Challenging, and the local grade is Difficult. Both of those are about the ground and the back-to-back days, not the distance.

On paper the days look reasonable: 9 to 16 km (5.6 to 9.9 miles) and 650 to 755 m (2,133 to 2,477 ft) of climbing, over 5 to 7 hours. Several of our Spanish tours cover more ground than that in a day. What makes these days long is what’s underfoot. The trails are uneven, rocky, narrow in places and loose with gravel, there are steep sections going up and coming down, and most of the route is above the treeline with no shade and no shelter at all.

Then there’s the shape of the week. Four hiking days in a row with a pack on, three nights at hut altitude in between, and a 1,600 m (5,249 ft) descent on the last one, which is the day that finds out whether you trained. You should be comfortable hiking 5 to 7 hours on rough ground on consecutive days before you book, and mountain hiking experience counts for more here than raw endurance.

The optional summits are genuinely optional and nobody is waiting for you: the lookout peaks along the ridge above the first hut, the side trails off the day 3 traverse, and the Mt. Triglav climb, which is a different thing altogether and has its own section below.

Not sure whether you’re ready? Ask us. We’ll tell you honestly, and your free custom training plan (€300 value) is built to get you there.

Three of your six nights are in mountain huts in the middle of the Julian Alps, and this is the part people ask about most, so here it is straight.

You share a room. Rooms run from 2 to 20 beds depending on the hut and what’s free on your dates. The first hut, above the Pokljuka Plateau, is shared rooms only. The Vodnik hut on Velo Polje and the hut at Double Lake both have rooms of 2, 4, 6 and 10 beds, and you get the smallest room available. A room of 2 can’t be guaranteed or bought in advance, because there are only a handful of them and the whole country wants them in the same twelve weeks.

You share the washroom too. The huts on this route have flush toilets, two of them have running drinking water, and sometimes there’s a hot shower. For Slovenian huts at this height that’s a good standard rather than a given.

No sleeping bag needed. Blankets and single-use paper sheets are provided. A lightweight cotton sleeping liner is still worth packing: you’ll sleep better on it and it saves the paper.

The food is simple and there’s plenty of it. Most of these huts have no road and are resupplied by helicopter, so the kitchen works with a short list: mountain stews with or without meat, soup, eggs, cheese and cured ham at breakfast, chocolate, hot drinks and soft drinks. Vegetarian and vegan choices exist and they’re limited. If you eat gluten free, or have any other dietary need, bring your own snacks to fill the gaps and mention it when you book so the huts know you’re coming.

If sharing a room with strangers is a hard no, this isn’t the tour to force. Say so and we’ll point you at a route where every night is a private room with your own bathroom.

Included: your main bag is collected in Ljubljana on day 2 and taken to your hotel at Lake Bled, where it’s waiting for you when you come down off the mountain on day 5.

Not included: luggage transfer between the huts, because there isn’t one. No road reaches them, which is the reason they’re worth sleeping in. So for the three hut nights, you carry what you need.

What that actually means: a daypack-sized load. Hiking clothes, a warm layer, a waterproof, water, sun protection, toiletries, a change of base layers, a liner for the hut bed, a headlamp and whatever snacks you want. The huts supply the bedding, the dinners and the breakfasts, so there’s no camping kit, no stove and no food for four days to carry. Most hikers do it comfortably in a 30 to 35 liter pack (roughly 1,800 to 2,100 cubic inches).

And a swimsuit and a small towel, right at the top of the pack where you can get at them on day 5.

Mt. Triglav, 2,864 m (9,396 ft), is the highest mountain in Slovenia and the one on the national flag, and this route hikes right beneath it. Reaching the summit is an add-on, and it’s worth being clear about what it involves, because it isn’t hiking.

The last 300 m (984 ft) of height, which takes about an hour and a half each way, is a cabled via ferrata climb rather than a hike. It’s protected with steel hand lines and iron stemples driven into the rock, and some of it is very exposed. An experienced mountaineer may not think twice about it. Anyone else will want somebody alongside them, and in poor weather that stops being a preference.

So it’s only offered with an IFMGA licensed mountain guide, who brings all the equipment and the professional judgment. The cost is €460 for the trip and covers 1 to 4 hikers, so it gets cheaper per person if you’re hiking together.

How it changes your week: on day 3 you hike past the Vodnik hut and carry on for roughly 2 more hours and 500 m (1,640 ft) of climbing to the hut below the summit, and sleep there instead. Your guide meets you at that hut early on day 4, takes you up and back down to easier ground, and parts company with you there. Then you carry on into the Valley of the Seven Triglav Lakes on your own, so day 4 is a long one.

The summit is also busy in summer, especially at weekends. If a crowded summit isn’t what you’re after, the view of Triglav from the Hribarice Plateau on day 4 is the better photograph anyway, and it costs nothing.

There’s nobody leading you on this tour, so the navigation matters. You get route notes for every hiking day and GPS tracks for the whole route, in a personalized smartphone app they built for their own trips, along with an information pack on what’s around you.

The trails themselves help. Slovenian mountain paths are marked with the Knafelc blaze, a red circle with a white center painted on rocks and trees, and the junctions carry wooden signposts with the hut names and times on them. The route also follows sections of the Via Alpina and the Slovenian Mountain Trail, both of which are long-established and well signed.

Bring a power bank. Four days without a reliable socket is the kind of detail that only becomes interesting on day 3, and the huts can’t promise you a charge.

If you’d rather somebody else did the navigating and the thinking, say so when you enquire and we’ll talk you through the guided option in the Julian Alps instead.

This tour runs from late June to late September only, because that’s when the high huts in the central Julian Alps are open. They usually open in the last week of June and close in late September.

Mountain weather here changes fast and the range is wide. A hot day can pass 30°C (86°F), which makes sunscreen, sunglasses and a hat genuinely necessary when most of your route is above the treeline with no shade. A bad windy day up high can sit at 0°C (32°F), and it can snow on the highest peaks even in summer, though that’s unusual.

You don’t need a down jacket and thermal pants. You do need layers you can add and shed, a waterproof, a thin layer that covers your arms, legs and the back of your neck against sunburn, broken-in boots with real grip for loose rock, and poles for the long descent on day 5.

And the swimsuit. Lake Bohinj on day 5, and Lake Bled on day 6 if the weather holds.

Included: the transfer from Ljubljana to the trailhead on the Pokljuka Plateau on day 2, and your main luggage from Ljubljana to Lake Bled.

Not included: getting to your Ljubljana hotel at the start, the bus from Lake Bohinj to Lake Bled on day 5, and getting away from Bled at the end.

Ljubljana airport sits between the two, about 25 minutes from the city and about 30 minutes from Bled, which makes the one-way route easy at both ends. Venice Marco Polo, Treviso, Trieste, Zagreb and Klagenfurt are all realistic alternatives and often cheaper, with shared and private transfers running from each of them. The right one for your flights can be arranged if you’d rather not book it yourself.

Arriving a day early is a good idea on this trip, because day 2 puts you straight onto a ridge. A night at the end is easy to add too, either at Bled or back in Ljubljana.

Travel insurance isn’t included and we strongly recommend it. Make sure your policy covers hiking and mountain rescue up to 3,000 m (9,843 ft), which this route needs because it spends three days above the treeline a long way from a road. If you add the optional Mt. Triglav summit, check that via ferrata is covered as well, because plenty of standard policies exclude it.

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