Ready for takeoff

About 100 horses, 250kg including luggage and fuel for about 300km, 4 times…

After about 1 hour after we unloaded our stallions, the party had started.  A nice climb from 500m to 1900m, instantly a nice pass.  Numerous hairpins and switchbacks, nice gravel and a very nice ascent to almost the top of the Stol.

Stol, also known as Veliki Stol (Slovene for chair / great chair) or Hochstuhl (German for high chair), is the highest peak in the Karawanken mountain chain, with an altitude of 2236 m. The border between Slovenia and Austria runs along its ridge.

There are numerous routes to its peak from both the Austrian and Slovene sides, and a mountain hut called Prešernova Koča stands below its second peak of Mali Stol (Slovene:small chair), 2198 m. The hut was originally built in 1909, but was burnt down in 1942 during the Second World War by partisans, to prevent it from being used by German soldiers. It was rebuilt in 1966 and is open from mid-June to mid-September.

After 1,5 days of only gravel, forest, high speed drifting, encountering road kill (Koen had hit a small deer, causing it to be half paralyzed so Ad had to ‘help it’ so it didn’t have to suffer anymore) and stuff like that, it was obvious that all of this was pure fun.  But in this way we covered not enough km as the crow flies to get in 2 weeks in the north of Greece.  We had to head south quickly and decided to ride a little bit more asphalt.

Meanwhile we passed some beautiful views and places worth visiting:

Midday the second day we reached the border with Croatia.  This is also a beautiful country, but in our opinion has already too much western influences. 

 More posts coming up...