Skiing without clutter: on the eco-friendly slopes of Slovenia’s Julian Alps

19.02.2024 - 10:17 / theguardian.com / Winter Olympics / Julian Alps

Winding through Slovenia’s Julian Alps, it’s easy to miss the signs to the Vogel ski centre and carry on driving. The cable car and car park are concealed deep in woods above beautiful Lake Bohinj – a deliberate policy to keep the landscape free from tourist clutter and visible ski infrastructure. The result is one of the most natural skiing areas in Europe.

From its hidden entrance in the woods, the cable car ascends to Vogel and the views open up: mountains soaring above, snowy churches below, and the deep blue lake dropping away beneath until it’s the size of a puddle.

It took only a few minutes to grab skis from the hire centre at the summit, then I was off, following the curve of the piste, my legs adjusting to their first passage over the face of winter. Vogel is small and its runs are mainly reds and blues – the kind you bomb down through the woods, admiring the untarnished nature on either side. The piste signs are all wooden, no billboards or snow cannon are visible: Bohinj’s Triglav national park won’t allow them for environmental reasons. Artificial snow delays the first buds of spring, so can mess with the mountain’s natural cycle.

The Slovenes are known by their Balkan neighbours as “the skiers” – a reputation earned during the second world war when Slovenian partisans fought the Nazis in the Alps bordering Italy and Austria on skis. They have also produced a fair number of the region’s medal winners in snow sports: former Slovenian-Yugoslavian alpine skier Jure Franko regularly won golds for the Yugoslavia Olympic team. During the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, locals celebrated by chanting: “Jure Franko, we love you more than burek!” (Burek are much-revered filled filo pastry rolls; to admit to loving something more is blasphemy.)

It seems the Slovenian mountains haven’t changed much in appearance since partisan and Yugoslav days, thanks to the eco-conscious planning policies of the park authorities, which forbid the construction of large hotels. They even forbade the building of another chairlift in nearby Soriška Planina, because it would disrupt the nesting ground of the endangered wild Styrian hen.

The landscape is also a result of Slovenes’ closeness to their mountains. Soriška Planina and Pokljuka are only an hour’s drive from the capital, Ljubljana, so not everyone needs a hotel near the slopes – they just jump in their cars and go skiing for the day. Mountains are in the national consciousness. “People take care of the mountains because it’s just what we all do,” said Blaz Kavcic, an outdoorsy Ljubljanian friend who has skied since he could walk.

As it was only my second day back on skis in years, I booked a lesson to improve my carving technique with Kavcic from Activity