Soča Valley & Vršič Pass

With its bright emerald-green water, the Soča is regarded as one of the most beautiful rivers in Europe and is an eldorado for kayaking, rafting and fly fishing. Over the Vršič Pass, at around 1,611 m the highest road pass in Slovenia, you reach the valley in 50 hairpins; on the ascent stands the wooden Russian Chapel. The valley was the scene of the Isonzo battles in the First World War.

Highlights

• Emerald-green Soča for rafting and kayaking
• Vršič Pass (around 1,611 m), Slovenia's highest
• Russian Chapel on the pass road
• History of the Isonzo front (First World War)

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Soča valley in the Julian Alps is famous for its river, whose water flows in an unreal, glowing emerald green through narrow gorges and over pale limestone beds. The Julian Alps, named by the Romans after Julius Caesar, belong to the Southern Limestone Alps and arose from the deposits of a primeval tropical sea, which was later thrust upwards and deeply cut by glaciers and rushing rivers. Thus the Soča shaped its spectacular gorges over thousands of years.

Yet the valley also bears a heavy history. In the First World War the Isonzo Front ran here, on which twelve bitter battles were fought, a young Ernest Hemingway served as an ambulance driver and set the front a literary memorial in “A Farewell to Arms”. The Vršič Pass, at around 1611 metres the highest road pass in Slovenia, was built in the middle of the war by Russian prisoners of war. An avalanche, which cost many of them their lives, is still commemorated by a small wooden Russian Chapel on the pass road, a quiet place amid the wild mountain world. The fifty hairpin bends of the pass, driven into the rock by the prisoners under the harshest conditions, connect the valley of Kranjska Gora with the upper Soča valley and today rank among the most impressive mountain roads of the Julian Alps. Whoever follows them travels at the same time through nature and history.