Road trip to the top of Mangart Saddle 2,072 m (6,798 ft) in Slovenia

“When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make lemonade.”
― Andrew Carnegie

There come days, when you need to just push threw, and there come days when you need to remember for those rainy days. Just to keep them in a "cookie jar" when I need some motivation, reminder of good times and beautiful moments in my life like these.

There has been a while, since I shared any of my road trips. That doesn't mean there has been no other road trips, that I always loved.

Exploring has always been one of my favorite hobbies threw out the year. Some know me as a hiker, explorer, photographer and finding new hobbies like fishing, driving remote control cars, while always open minded to try new stuff.

Two years have passed since I went on a camping road trip with my friend, some might remember @shakazula . We escaped the heatwave in the middle of summer back in 2024 to chill for few days and cool down in the ice cold, but beautiful rive Soča.

@shakazula also had a brilliant idea to take his mountain bike with him. Cheated a little bit when we took of from Bovec over Mangart pass to reach the top of Mangart Saddle with the bike in the car. He got a great idea to go downhill with his bike and meet at the bottom. Figured it's a great idea, drank our morning coffee and off we went at around 10.00 in the morning.

The views were never ending with every twist and turn, although the road is narrow and old, there is no need to rush here as the views were breathtaking.

With views there were tunnels, some traffic, motorbikes and cyclists. It's been on my go to list for almost 10 years, but that day I didn't need anyone to ask me twice if I'd go up there.

Mangart pass is the highest road in Slovenia right on the border with Italy. If your brave enough you can take a hike from Italian side or from Slovenia. It's in the heart of Triglav national park that is rich in natural beauty, view's and sadly with quite a lot of war history from 1st, 2nd world war and even decades before that.

That's actually one of the reason this road was even constructed by Italian soldiers, back in 1938 during the period when this region was part of Italy. But history goes back over 3000 years.

These were the view's when we parked near the top. Sadly the road here onward is closed as a major landslide occurred, destroying the road that leads to the hut in 2023.

For anyone that is interested in those kind of history, it's worth looking into with the help of uncle google or nowadays asking your favorite Ai.

Of course I made a few stops by the road without any rush, as it was well worth taking a short break where ever I had a change and place to park the car by the road and look at the view.

After open heart surgery it's difficult for me to find balance, especially in the summer, while listening to my body with every step.
When going threw photo's there still visible, where the big landslide was, while my friend went to the top around the road and we met on the view point or on top of Mangart saddle, just a bit above 2000m which was my goal for quite a while. We had a watch to prove me right while reaching my goal.

_{Where the landslide took place is clearly visible here in the middle, this part of the road is still closed and will probably remain closed (visible why).}

At this point my friend was well off on the trail going downhill with his mountain bike. On the path he found two Slovenian as he called them maniacs as they were well prepared and wasn't their first downhill on this mountain. Mind you those two were at least 10 years older and went on top with their normal bikes, without any help with electricity or other transport.

Slowly went back to the car and started going down to the point where we met in tiny village Log pod Mangartom at a bar. They mentioned over 1000m height decline if not even more, and they had about 1 hour of hard downhill ride and showed the way as my friend is experienced, but said it got a little tricky and narly' in the middle.

Then we headed to the market, buy some food to grill at the camp and later headed to river Soča to cool down and chill for the rest of the day.

[//]:# ([//]:# (!worldmappin 46.44559 lat 13.64655 long Beautiful view from Mangartsko sedlo over Italy d3scr))