Globošak – The beauty of the Savinjska region

Beep, beep, beep. The sound of my alarm clock wakes me up, announcing that is time to say goodbye to the warm embrace of my comfy bed. I don’t hit the snooze button this time; I only do that during the week. And where to now? This is always the hardest part of starting any adventure. There are a lot of canyons out there, but you have to look at the conditions first. The length, aquatic characteristics, water level, weather conditions, temperature, the experience of the whole group… Life is always full of compromises, you have to make them with your family, with partners, at work and also in canyoning. And after a longer thought, I came up with the destination – the Globošak Canyon.


Globošak, embedded between the cliffs Strevčeva peč and Goljarjeva peč
Globošak is quite a vertical canyon, located in the Slovene valley Logarska dolina. It lies between cliffs Strevčeva peč and Goljarjeva peč, just beneath the Olševa Mountain. It can be basically classified as a gorge, which even experienced canyoners tend to overlook. But luckily, some years ago, 2 local guides discovered it and equipped it for canyoning. From then on, I love to visit it at the change of seasons. Its upper part is quite astonishing and there is another plus side. Till Podolševa, where we enter the canyon, a road leads to it. Luckily because of that, you can save yourself 1 hour of approach hike to that spot. An interesting fact – the Podolševa village, till 1953, was named Sveti Duh (Holy Spirit), then, they renamed it because of the after-war legislation that took place in Slovenia. But to the local people, this change didn’t prove itself that much, so they still like to use the old name. That's another proof that politics are not always s successful at imposing their opinion!


The upper part of the canyon .
We met with the group at the village Solčava, where we had a coffee and planed out the rest of the day. 3 of the 4 group members were all photographers, that is why Klemen decided, that he would rather just enjoy the canyoning than make pictures. Sometimes, it just feels good to leave the camera in the car and let your soul completely emerge in the beauty of nature, and not to be bothered with looking for a new motive to shoot each step of the way. But my priority was to test out my new equipment. We planed the whole trip rather quickly, as well as decided about the gear and the transfer. We took 110m of rope, parked at the exit of the canyon and then we drove with Andrej’s car to the top. I just love to do the canyons with groups, which don’t need long to decide on things. Everybody knows their place, what needs to be done and what you have to take with you. At Sveti Duh we stepped out of the car. A 20 minute-long walk in snow still waited for us there, sliding on our backsides and trying to slide in the entry of the gorge. I found out that snow is a very nice "invention" indeed, because it saved us a lot of time going in, just sliding to the bottom with no hard work.


The photographer at work
But the snow also played a few tricks on us non-the-less. The guides, which equipped the canyon years before, placed the first anchorage spot in the spirit of the Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Indeed, they place it in a much hidden place so it was very hard to see at first. But after a few minutes of digging through the snow, we managed to finally find it and the entry to the canyon was opened once more.


Preparing to abseil down on the rope.



The look to the upper part of the canyon.
In the upper part of the canyon the camera shutter didn’t have much time to rest. The water managed to find its way through the rock and composed a true kingdom of beauty along with it; a truly remarkable formation worth of admiration. The water jumped on the rocks almost like playing with them. I found myself thinking about the future at that point. What if I would have been born some millions of years into the future, where the canyon would have been fully carved at that point? Sometimes, I am angry at myself for thinking so much, I should rather be happy with what I have and what every moment offers me here and now.


Action!
Before descending the highest waterfall, we had a bit of fun. Near the edge of the pool stood a really big rock, which we shoved right to the edge. When doing this, Tina said we shouldn’t be doing such silly things, because the rock could hit the next anchor point. We quickly shut her up and told that there is no anchor down there and the boys push the huge rock happily over the edge. But I have to admit, at that point, I found out that women’s intuition is something we should listen to more often. The fact is that Tina was not so far off with her fears, because there was an anchorpoint right down below and the rock didn’t fall very far away from it too. About 1 meter before the point the rock hit the wall and exploded into thousands of pieces. We saw that after we abseiled down to the bottom. We boys were so amused by that fact, whereas Tina was not really happy about it.


Pushing the rock down.
After this, I thought to myself that men and women are really different. I would say that we men have a bigger inner child in us than women do, whereas women are wiser. That is why it is so important so accept and tolerate our differences. If we don’t, the situation is like a descend down a waterfall with a huge amount of water pouring down, which suffocates you in the end. And all pretty things stop at that point.


Remains of snow in the canyon.



Climbing on slippery wood demands a different technique .