Today, we awoke to clear blue skies... headed to Julian Alps.. .. to see if we could get some good photos of the mountains in the clear conditions. The Julian range separates Slovenia and Italy. We supposed that the Julian in question must have been the all conquering Big Julie Caesar... that needs to be confirmed.
We stopped to read the information boards... and discovered that the best viewing base for the mountains was at the top of Vrsic Pass. We started our climb and near the top noticed that each hairpin bend had a number indicating the remaining hairpins before you reached the top. We noticed when there were 21 remaining... there are 50 in all. We were told that Vrsic Pass has a long history... people in the adjoining Slovenian valley would walk over the pass to see their doctor. The pass has an altitude of 1,600 metres... anyone with a serious medical condition was not going to make it. The doctors must have had an impressive success rate with their medical treatments... provided you didn't count the fatalities along the track.
A large part of the road over the pass was built by Russian prisoners-of-war during WWI. Apparently there were 10,000 employed on the job. An old wooden chapel sits along the side of the road as a memorial to the Russian soldiers who died on the job. They built wooden walls to provide some protection against avalanches... but not always successfully. One avalanche took out 300 of them in one go! Much use of the pass was made in WWII... but there was no benefit to the Russians.
Alpine countryside in spring is always a hive of activity... the growing season is so short. We talked to a cyclist... a crusty old 65 year old... who said he had photographed 16 different species of orchids in flower that day on the mountainside. We saw fields of yellow and blue and red... very special.
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