KOSEC Gorge Hike
If Indiana Jones ever fancied a hike in Green Slovenia then this would be the one we would recommend.. And even we only discovered it after ten years of living here, when some guests mentioned a walk with multiple waterfalls, a gorge and scenery more like Borneo than Sunny central Europe!
So we had to go see for ourselves!
We knew the hike was hidden away in a village that we didn't know, next to a village that we did know and all of this was not too far from the most beautiful waterfall in all Green Slovenia, Kozjak..
You never need an excuse to see Kozjak waterfall again, so we made a plan for an amazing daytrip out from the Lodge to drive to the uberstunning Soca river, do the short hike to see the coolest waterfall of them all and then spend the rest of the day exploring and seeing if we could do the Kosec Gorge hike into the bargain..
So yet another daytrip adventure from the Lodge in Green paradise, but wow, we are almost always pleasantly surprised when we go discover new secret Green places here and this secret hike absolutely blew us away!
It is really easy to whizz up the Vipava Valley motorway after breakfast and in an hour you are sitting sipping a cuppucino and admiring the view of the bridge over the Soca river in the pretty little Soca village of Kanal..
This is where the Soca river goes to another level of beauty and it is just another 30 mins whizz up the most beautiful river in Europe past Tolmin to reach Kobarid and the car park for Kozjak Slap (Waterfall)..
We try to visit this uberstunning waterfall at least once a year AND at different times of the year too, cos the nature there is always changing and this trip was on a typically sunny mid September day..
If you were lucky enough to have this magical waterfall, reached by a gentle walk along the Soca river and then up a Lord of the Rings fern covered rock valley with hobbit bridges, in your country, then there would almost certainly not be just the 50 or so people we saw on our 90 min September walk to the falls there and back..
There are bigger, more powerful waterfalls all over Green Slovenia, but when you factor in the short walk through a film set and the anticipation of hearing the water thundering down the river next to you, then the magic when you see the picture perfect rock pool and finally the turquoise crystal clear water gushing down into this rock theatre for the first time.. then you will hopefully see for yourself what we are talking about..
But this particular article is not about all that magic, you could and should go see Kozjak first in the day like we did..
Then you should go hike the Kosec gorge to complete the most epic waterfall filled day you could imagine!
How to get to Kosec Gorge..
From the Kozjak car park drive for about 10-15 mins up the steep curvy mountain road to Dreznisca. This is a very pretty, but steep road with a few hairpin bends and it kinda drops you into a meadow covered Alpine valley even closer to the big surrounding Julian Alps that sit behind Drevnisca like bouncers standing on a nightclub door..
We strongly recommend you park up in Dreznica for several reasons.. One of the most important ones being that the short hike from here to Kosec is also absolutely stunning, so should be included in the whole loop hike..
But Kosec is also just a tiny village, so the last thing we or you want to do is spoil this hike for the villagers, who deserve their peace and quiet and who do a wonderful job to keep this secret hike so well signposted and maintained.
The Kosec villagers have put a small car park in the village too, for maybe 4 or 5 cars and we really loved that also they put a little wooden box there for visitors to contribute towards the parking and that is how Green toursim can win in Green Slovenia so we commend it..
But we do not write these helpful, (hopefully) articles expecting mass tourism to descend on these stellar secret Green places..
It just ain't gonna happen, cos even if you are the selfie snapping, litter dropping, 5 minute wonder tourist who just wants to get a photo of the falls and then go, then Kosec and so many of our other Secret Places to Visit are simply NOT for you, cos you cannot do them in 5 mins flat!
You have to hike, bike and properly enjoy them, so even if you do park in Kosec, you are not gonna see a waterfall for at least another 40 mins there and back hike and you would miss the gorge and all the rest of it..
So you might as well park in Dreznica, where there are a couple of little car parks and fully enjoy this amazing hiking loop we are gonna tell you all about!
Where to park in Dreznica..
Even though by car it is quite quick up from Kobarid to Dreznica, hiking up is very probably not an option as it is a narrow steep main road and you will be doing your main hike now anyway from Dreznica to Kosec..
You will also see some people biking up this road from Kobarid as you drive back down, people you will feel respect for and probably label as fitness fantics!!
It is not normally necessary here for us to give lots of detail on parking spots, but Dreznica is quite tiddly & tightly packed, so we took a few photos where you can park and some are here, others at the bottom of the page..
There are 3 small car parks, the first a small parking place in the village, bearing left when you enter the tight streets, but if you drive up the main road towards the fire station and little kids sports play area there is a longer parking by the recycling bins and one smaller one at the back of the play area.
We already mentioned that small car park in Kosec..
Deffo bring at least some energy food and of course water for this hike.. There is a restaurant come tourist farm in Dreznica, but it never seems to be open.. We eat there once and it was great though, but for quite a long hike worth having at least a sandwich.
We also spotted a bar come cafe, but in September this was also closed, despite the lovely sunny day!
Anyway, once the car is ditched you walk up through the village and will immediately notice the biggest mountain high above you with a beautiful irregular triangle shape is Mt Krn, 2,244m high and one of the most recognisable Slovenian mountains..
The walk from Dreznica is quite short but steep and it is so worthwhile as a "settler" for this entire hike..
There are several grand artistic wooden carvings and stone features along the side of the road to admire and one particular stone piece is made from scrap metal from the gruesome WW1 battle that raged in these parts as a reminder of the worst mountain conflict anywhere in the world, claiming over one million soldiers in just one prolonged battle..
The views and panoramas multiply all around you as you walk higher up the road and soon enter the little village of Kosec..
You walk over a bridge and see a yellow sign for the walk and don't worry too much if the signs do say exactly KOSEC, cos the way the Slovenian language works is to mutate the main names with lots of different endings!
The key thing is to follow the yellow signs and also handy to know you will be walking DOWN out of the village towards the little St JUST church. (Sv means St)..
As soon as you leave the last house in the villlage you are totally embraced in nature and we were both excited and nervous to do the walk.
We had found several waterfalls named somewhere ahead on googlemaps, but with no marked paths to help us and just huge areas of blank green map in between them, so we really didn't know what to expect!
This kind of exploration is fine if you live here like we do and can come back again, sometimes several times to explore, find new bits, restaurants, often get lost a bit, retrace our steps, all that kinda stuff..
BUT you haven't got the time for these shenanigans with your limited holiday time and this is why we will now explain exactly how to do this walk, so you can spend less time aimlessly looking for stuff on your phone and more time totally enjoying this amazing walk.
And by the way, there are several parts on this hike where you really do need to be looking carefully where you are going and not at your phone!
What is Kosec Gorge (Korita)..
From Kosec the hills and fields go relentlessly & steeply down to a hidden rock river bed far below, where the water has carved an absolutely stunning mini gorge into the rocks with steep cliffs rising up, covered in trees and green, but looking more like jungle than forest!
The great news is there is a hiking loop that goes all the way down to gorge from this fae end of the village by the St Just church and when you finally get to the gorge, you get to scramble along the short maybe 100m long river section, climbing back up into the forest and hiking back steeply up through the trees to finally reach the other end, (start) of the village.
There are several very long, very beautiful, thin waterfalls depositing water down the steep hills to give this jungle setting a feeling of Green paradise and that's it..
But it will take you around 3 hours, maybe 2 and a half, maybe 4..
We didn't even know for sure if there was a loop or where it started and finished, so now you are armed with this information it makes this hike so much more comfortable to do and enjoy!
A couple more things to know, firstly, once you start the waterfall hunting part of the hike, the forest tracks go down VERY steeply indeed, but if you are careful there is always a step or a rock or a branch to help you.. this is a path afterall..
But this means that once you have started the hike and hit the first waterfall, you are pretty much committed to continuing the loop walk, otherwise you face walking back up the same way you came for no reward of seeing new Green stuff.
This was our dilemma as we continued on and on from little green wonder to the next, but always considering if we needed to go back, so you do not need to worry about this, just push on, following the track and the yellow signs and then this sensational hiking loop will reveal itself to you!
There are signs for the various waterfalls, but the names do not mean much to us vistiors, rather they will give you reassurance that you are on the right track!
The last thing to consider is the weather, as we would deffo not choose to do this hike during the rain or when very wet as in several parts could be really dodgy.
Once you are here in Green Slovenia, you will not be in a position to change the time of year you do this hike, but there is one last weapon at your disposal, which is to choose to come see waterfalls and other water features a day or too after IT HAS RAINED, if this option becomes available to you.
We are constantly tipping April, May, Sept and Oct as the very best months to come here and you should know that if the summer is dry these waterfalls may well be dry too, especially if you rock up in the middle of July or August..
But there ARE thunderstorms in the summer, pretty big ones too, that drop a lot of water onto Slovenia, which helps to make it all so GREEN & lovely! And you can use this to your advantage..
Having said all that, we would still not hesitate to do this hike without any water, cos it is simply an epic hike, water or not!
How to hike the Kosec Gorge..
OK, so we have walked out of the village down past the church and there is the wierdest little green alleyway path stuck between two dry stone walls, built too close to one another until you pop out into some grassy meadows and see your first signs for the waterfalls, (waterfall is slap in Slovenian)..
This is where you start going very steeply down indeed and are rewarded quite soon with a wooden bridge crossing a ridiculously almost vertical slope with water gushing down under the little bridge.
What we didn't realise was this waterfall continues all the way to the bottom of the hill and after the little wooden bridge you continue off into the forest and come back around to see the rest of it dropping vertically down into the base of the forest.
The tracks are very good, sometimes muddy, sometimes rocky, but you are always lead to the best viewing spots for the waterfalls along the way..
No idea how long the drop of this first waterfall is, but it has to be a lengthy one!
The next waterfall is an absolute stunner and you can take a short diversion, still along a marked path, to go sit on a rock next to the base as the water crashes down..
Remember we were hiking this gorge loop in mid September and at the Kozjak waterfall in the morning we maybe saw 50 people along the whole route, which is not a lot of people considering the world class level of the place..
But here.. in around the 3 hours it took us to walk this forest loop, we saw 3 people and a Dalmation spotty dog!!
That is it.. One of the people was the owner of the dog and she turned out to be a local lady who gave us valuable reassurance when we were more than half way around the loop, to know we could contiinue walking and get back to the village..
The other two were a Spanish couple walking up to the village from the church, so this is backwards on the trail and so we suspect they did not complete the loop at all..
Be prepared for a few signs where it is like being in the zoo with a sign for an animal and you keep looking through the glass, but do not see it!
The Gorge..
We were really wondering why on earth this walk was called gorge cos all we had seen was waterfalls, but then we came to bottom of the hill, turned a corner and saw the river bottom deep below us with water trickling along.
Even this far, you are still thinking, do we really continue down there, surely we will just have to walk back the way we came.. but please carry on.
There are ropes and metal wires to keep you falling off the few edges by the side of the path and then you are here, literally at rock bottom and you finally realise why it is called a gorge walk..
Cos this was your destination.. You walk here, you explore, admire and then you walk out..
Our only real clue that we could walk along the gorge river bed was the wooden bridge in the middle, so we edged our way along the rocks, crossed the bridge and found a most beautiful curvy section of the gorge where the river exited low down, perhaps with another mini waterfall ahead of us we could not see..
But the gorge rocks were high like a cliff and you could clearly see the how the waves of water had carved & curved through this rock over millions of years..
Very special indeed..
There are bigger, longer, easier to walk gorges all over Green Slovenia, but Kosec gorge is just so natural and personal. We really felt like we had found it almost by accident, but we had not done anything clever, just stedfastedley followed the path and we were absolutely and completely on our own down here at the gateway to the underworld in green nature..
It is only when you go over the wooden bridge that you can properly see where the "path", for want of a better word, continues steeply up..
There are some more cable supports and tree root steps up the side of the gorge and we realised this was the way out!
We now knew we were 100% committed to going up that slope and not going back, but that was for a few minutes later as we explored the gorge a bit and sucked it all in..
Oh yes, this is most definetely "the Kosec Gorge Hike"!
Now, in simple terms you are technically half way along the walk and have to go up from whence you came!
Many people prefer going up compared to scrambling down and you will get the absolute full mix of forest tracks on the way up, first scrambling and pulling a bit to get out of the gorge, then facing steep winding rock paths, mud slopes, but there is ALWAYS a proper path to follow, so make sure you have saved enough water and go enjoy the forest!
It did cross our minds how on earth this lady did this walk with her dog, but Slovenes seem to be born to walk in the hills with ease as we huffed and puffed our way up the hill!
You actually walk above the river in parts as you basically walk across and under where you first walked down the hill with the waterfalls and finally you return to the start of the village.. hence the loop..
There is one short flatt woodland section of the walk back with a kind of forest circle clearing between the trees and signs explaining the magical force of the rocks here and at the very least this is a place to stop for a moment and steel yourself for the final hike up..
By now, reading this, you will know if this a walk is for you, so we will not sugar coat the effort you need to walk back up the hill, feeling pretty lost at times, but at last you see a sign for Kosec and head up & away from the river for the last time.
Of course, everyone is different and we decided to follow the river for a bit extra to be rewarded with giant rock boulders and some lovely coloured stretches of river, but we were tired by now, so returned to the path.
The last thing to mention about this loop hike is that finally leaving the forest tracks you get deja vue for the very start of the hike and we managed to convince ourselves we would arrive back at that little church any time..
But we were wrong and only realised this when we followed the very final bit of path up through a meadow and hit the road that we had walked up from Dreznica, just before Kosec village started!
The views heading back down into Dreznica are fabulous, now out of the forest the mountains return in all their majesty and that relatively big Dreznica church appears as a tiny piece of lego in this mountain panorama..
Two MORE bonus Waterfalls to consider..
But folks.. that is not quite the end of it, cos incredibubbly, just as you walk back into Dreznica there is a big wooden sign on your right to the Krampez waterfall, saying 20 mins.. So if you have enough gas in the tank, there are two more waterfalls to add to today's agenda!
Whenever you see a sign for Slap, (waterfall) it is well worth following, but the path will almost inevitably go UP and our standard advice here in Slovenia is whenever you see a sign that says 20 mins, it is gonna take 40 mins for us mere mortals!
However this bonus hike DID take just 20 mins on our tired legs and it does go steeply up a perfect stone track next to the river that flows down from.. you guessed it.. the waterfalls!
Mercifully Krampez and Supot falls are close together and both quite different to what we have seen so far today, made from thick mountain rock as this path leads off up into the mountains after here..
The rocks are pretty special in the Krampez waterfall pool and glisten like jewels as the water splashes down, so we would strongly recommend adding this little mini leg into your waterfall adventure..
It is all downhill from from here back to the village and maybe you will eat in Dreznice, maybe Kobarid, but we have a fave very local restaurant on the roadside called Jazbec, (Badger in Slovene), in the village of Irdsko, where against the odds, we also seem to get a table and this is absolutely NOT the double Michelin starred restaurant around here that gets more than enough internet coverage..
You will get simple home cooked local delicacies here, perfect for getting some energy back before the drive home and If you sit on the Jazbec roadside terrace, the view up to mount Krn is fabulous and as you tuck into some home cooked delicacies, you can sit back and look up at where you were hiking today!
A Slovenian favourite here in the Alps is a fried cheese and potato dish called Frika, that should put the petrol back in your tank!
What a day! Simply Waterfalltastic..
We cannot tell you how much we love Kozjak waterfall, it is an instant top tenner in a Green Slovenian top ten that has well over 50 stunning, world class green wonders and MUST BE an unmissabubble part of your Green Slovenian holiday..
But we have gotta tell you that we were totally blown away with this Kosec Gorge hike too. Not one of the waterfalls could touch Kozjak for beauty, but boy oh boy, we would have such a decision to make if we only had half a day and had to choose between our morning Kozjak or afternoon Kosec activities..
Luckily if you plan your time, you can do both!!
So whatever you do, do NOT underestimate the incredible amount of green stuff you can do here in Green Slovenia and make sure you have enough time to not regret having to choose between the Kozjak falls and the Kosec Gorge..
There really is enough time to do them both in a daytrip from the Lodge, just get your logisitics right and choose the right day to do it..
If you have some little legs in your family or grouping, then Kozjak, with the walk there and back might be the limit, but now at least you know how close Dreznica is AND maybe you could also just add the shorter simpler hike to the two waterfalls at Krampez?
We remember going to see the well publicised Plitvice Lakes in Croatia as late in the year as we could muster in October and thinking..
"Boy oh boy, there is nothing here except for the multiple waterfalls that Slovenia does not also have in bucket loads.. if only just some of these poor people trudging around here knew even just a few of the waterfalls and amazing Green wonders in Slovenia!"
Yep, the number of waterfalls in Plitvice is impressive indeed, but we were completely underwhelmed by the final march along a crowded boardwalk to the so called "big Falls", especially after shuffling there like penguins for what seemed like our whole lives and thinking, oh my god, this is just a tiddler of a waterfall!
Ok, we are glad we saw it all.. once.. but we would not swap all those waterfalls in one place on that crowded Croatian day for the numerous secret waterfalls in Green Slovenia and especially not for this amazing, epic alternative set of waterfalls, where you have to get a bit sweaty in Kosec!
We still have a list of Green Slovenian treasures as long as a dragon's tail to go find & explore for the first time and it is such a pleasure to go do this in a little pocket rocket of a country that almost always delivers a bucket load of Green surprises, especially whenever you get off the well beaten track leading from Bled to Ljubblyjana to Piran..
We have our own guests to thank for this amazing Kosec Gorge tip and hope we have done it justice documenting our experiences there to make your Green Adventures work out even better..
Have a great hike..
French Connection en Slovenie
