‘We Are A Mountain Nation’

After six hours of trekking, I crested one last rock ledge to stand atop the highest mountain in Slovenia. The first thing I noticed wasn’t the three-hundred-sixty-degree view looking into Italy and Austria. It was the odd cylindrical structure at the summit’s center. It appeared to be an oversized bottle rocket, about the height of a person, made of steel, with a jaunty tin flag flying from its pointy roof reading “1895.”

I’ve climbed my share of peaks in the past decade, but I’d never seen anything quite like this. I tapped the cylinder with a knuckle and it rang hollow. I circled around and found a latched entry panel, above which was inscribed “Aljažev Stolp,” Slovenian for Aljaž Tower. I turned to my local mountaineering guide with question marks in my eyes. “It’s a storm shelter,” he said. “And proof of how important this mountain is to Slovenia.”

I already knew that the mountain, Triglav, is so highly regarded by