Podmežakla (Jesenice) - Škrbina (Mežakla)
Starting point: Podmežakla (Jesenice) (580 m)
Time of walking: 1 h 40 min
Difficulty: difficult pathless terrain
Difficulty of skiing: very demanding
Altitude difference: 630 m
Altitude difference (by path): 630 m
Map: Karavanke - osrednji del 1:50.000
Access to starting point:
From highway Ljubljana - Jesenice we go to the exit Lipce, where we turn right and we drive to Jesenice. In the center of the town we follow signposts for Podmežakla. When we drive through the underpass, we turn left and we continue driving on the main road few more 100 meters, whereupon by the road we notice the sign with the caption "Muzejsko območje Stara Sava". Immediately after this follows a crossroad, where we turn right towards apartment block (left bridge over Sava). Here we park on an appropriate place.
Path description:
From the parking lot, we look straight towards Mežakla, and we notice a smaller footpath which is only few meters ascending in the same direction. We go there and we ascend to plain, where there is macadam road or cart track. Here we continue left, and the path quickly brings us below lower highway viaduct. On the other side of the highway we can now on the left notice more or less overgrown route (clearing) of former power line, which is ascending towards the top of Mežakla.
About 30 meters higher we join it and so start ascending on increasingly steep slope. There isn't any path here, so we can only imagine it among rocks, stones and bushes.
Route or our path at least once crosses a worse cart track and is still all the time steeply ascending. After approximately 30 minutes of walking, the steepness for a short time decreases and terrain soon again steeply ascends. When we get feeling, that steepness second time somehow decreasing, we are in the vicinity of difficult and very steep scree. Follows some strenuous walking or searching of appropriate passages on stones and thin gravel, among rocks and rare bushes, all the way until we find ourselves below the cliffs, on the top of which we can observe television transmitter.
The terrain is becoming increasingly steep, and gradually we turn a little left in the forest, where we run into to a stairs similar barriers that preventing landslides, below which runs new cable. Here we can help ourselves with grabbing steel poles. When we already ascend right below Škrbina (50 meters), we can notice that there is terrain in intervals (of 2 meters) between so-called "stairs" is hardened with concrete mass. But caution! Concrete grounding isn't appropriate for walking, because its surface crumbles (slippery). Because of the steepness and lack of grip, and between the stairs too big distance, approximately 25 meters before the peak we go left on very steep, with grass and rare bushes vegetated slope, on which we carefully climb to the top of Škrbina (part of old steel cable, which is here, doesn't offer reliable grip). On top of Škrbina we go right on a marked path, which after a short time brings us to television transmitter, where there is a viewpoint and our destination.
The descent is recommended on normal path over Zakop.
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