Canyoning in Slovenia: An adventure that highlights the country's beauty and challenges travelers

This is a double black diamond.

That's the only coherent thought I can formulate as I glance 154 feet down to the bottom of the Parabola waterfall. I'm with my family and eight of our friends in Fratarica Canyon, a ribbon of streams, waterfalls and natural pools carved into a mountain just outside Triglav National Park in Slovenia's Julian Alps. My 16-year-old son, Henrik, is waiting for me at the bottom; he hiked down because a 20-foot jump a few pools back triggered a panic attack. My friend Al is there, too, giving me a double thumbs up — he's a dentist and, before descending, performed a floating exam on my 13-year-old daughter, Luisa, when she mashed her braces against a rock in the last pool.

We are canyoning — the occasionally extreme sport of navigating a gorge by hiking, swimming, jumping and rappelling. It's a thrilling and decidedly immersive way to experience nature, which in the Soča Valley — named for the aquamarine-colored river that snakes through western Slovenia and northeastern Italy — is nothing short of an adventurer's Eden. In addition to that luminescent river, there are hiking trails to hidden waterfalls, jagged limestone and dolomite peaks that sparkle like sequins in the morning light and alpine meadows spiked with wild orchids and woodland phlox.

Before this trip, no one in my group had tried canyoning. We chose Fratarica canyon over the gentler Sušec option because, after much e-mailing, Katja Rogelj, the owner and infectiously enthusiastic (not to mention patient) lead guide of Kata Adventures, reassured us that Fratarica was the equivalent of a blue (intermediate) ski run. Susec, she said, was a green (beginner). We had five teenage boys to please. The rest of us, I reasoned, were in decent to excellent condition. No bunny hill option for this gang!

That thinking changed by the time I got to the Parabola. But by then it was too late.

Hiking by waterfalls

Now known for being the birthplace of Melania Trump, Slovenia has a fascinating, complicated history. For most of the 20th century, the county was part of Yugoslavia, the independent Communist state that after World War II was run by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. Tito broke with Stalin in 1948, making the country more open to the West than others behind the Iron Curtain. After Tito's death in 1980, underlying ethnic tensions flared across the country, giving rise to brutal wars in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1991, Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia after a conflict that lasted 10 days.

That history was very much on our minds when we started our vacation with a one-night stay in Ljubljana, the country's charming capital, where we shook off our jet lag by walking through the city with Free Tour Ljubljana. We opted for a private guide — not free, but a certainly reasonable 115 euros for 14 people — to take us on a three-hour "Communist Fusion Tour." We visited several buildings and bridges designed by hometown hero Jože Plečnik, who modeled his classical designs on ancient Athens. We also passed art nouveau apartment buildings that would feel at home in Vienna and the kind of Soviet-style office blocks you'd find in Moscow. Our guide shared his experience growing up as a member of the Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia during the Tito era and offered his frank estimation of both the limits and benefits of the country's former Communist system.

From Ljubljana, we drove to Lake Bled, which is famous for an island with a pilgrimage church built near the end of the 17th century. It's a well-established tourist destination and if it was the only place I visited in Slovenia, I would have been delighted. But by the time I returned home to Minnesota, it felt like a footnote when compared with what came next.

We chose to stay in Bovec in the Soča Valley, getting there via the Vršič Pass, which is the highest road in Slovenia. (At only 5,285 feet, no one felt any effects from the altitude.) The pass has 50 hairpin turns, which was enough to make the carsick-prone drive on an alternate route. They made a wrong turn and ended on a short detour through Italy.

Dense with beech trees and mountain pine, the pass is a perfect starting point for all levels of hikes. We stopped at the Russian Chapel, a tiny but elaborate wooden church built on a strategic military road in 1916 by Russian prisoners of war in memory of their comrades who died building the road. In the evening sun, the tops of the trees looked yellow. Willow tits flitted past and I could hear a woodpecker's rat-a-tat echoing through the surrounding forest.

Bovec is your standard adventure town, full of sports gear rentals, bars, outdoor pizzerias and buff young guys with beards and man buns. It's a friendly, easygoing place. But unlike similar towns in northern Italy and Austria, it isn't overcrowded with vacationers.

We stayed at Apartments Mrakic, on the western edge of town. Well-priced (our apartment slept eight and cost 990 euros for three nights), the place gets deserved raves on Booking.com, mostly because of the owner, Vasja. He and his family live on the premises. He not only greeted us with tall glasses of local beer, but also stocked the fridge with Slovenian wine and fruit juice and prepared fabulous breakfasts: scrambled eggs, cold cuts, homemade preserves, plus fancy coffee and yogurt and muesli options.

Vasja offered expert advice about hiking, too. Our first morning, we set out on an easy two-mile walk to the Virje waterfall. I'd been skeptical that something so close to town would have the kind of nature payoff I was hoping for. But from the moment we stepped off the road and into the forest, I felt like I'd been transported to something out of "The Hobbit." The creek water was as clear and green as an emerald. There were moss-covered stones and trees springing out of rocks and hidden water caves.

The next day we drove to nearby Kobarid, which was the setting of the World War I Italian retreat depicted in Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms." Reminders of the war are everywhere, from a Fascist-style memorial to fallen Italian soldiers to the fortified trenches that cut through the mountain trails above town. We hiked for hours. I lost track of the steps we climbed, before descending and crossing the Soča into a forest on the way to the Kozjak waterfall, which pours through a crack in the rocks, like sparkling water from a glass pitcher.

Facing the canyon

We'd planned our Slovenian trip around the canyoning expedition with the adventure company, so expectations were high when, after hiking deep into the forest, Katja stopped and pointed at the Parabola, a delicate curve of water that shoots to the earth in a single elegant stream. I'd seen photos of it online, and I knew it was 48 meters high. I just hadn't done the math to realize that 48 meters was more than 150 feet — roughly the height of the Arc de Triomphe.

"Isn't it fabulous?" Katja said, her eyes wide with excitement.

Henrik looked at the waterfall and then back at me.

"We're going down that?" he asked? Henrik had just finished his sophomore year in high school. How had I missed that he was afraid of heights?

"It will be fine!" I lied.

After a safety demonstration — in addition to wet suits and sneakers, helmets were mandatory — we jumped into our first pool. The water was freezing, even with our wet suits, but the sensation of walking chest-deep through the gorge was glorious. This was different from hanging out in a lake. We were using the path of the water to get us on a three-hour journey from Point A to Point B.

At our first waterfall, we learned to lie back, tuck in our chins and cross our arms over our chests as we slipped over the rocks and into the next pool. On particularly steep waterfalls we either rappelled — the boys christened these moves "sack slicers" due to the positioning of the ropes across the groin — or held a rope as we rode the water. On one particularly energetic waterfall, my husband, Walter, tensed his body as it was battered by the force of the water. He looked like a corpse, which at least got a laugh from Henrik and the other boys.

The experience was exhilarating, a completely new way to see the world. But when it came time for the Parabola, I froze. Henrik had smartly decided against it at a point earlier in our trek when we could choose an alternate route. But I couldn't turn back and rescale the waterfalls. The only way down was, well, down.

I think Katja could see I was a flight risk. So she looked me in the eye and smiled.

"Don't look down," she instructed. Instead, I turned my face up and smiled at her fellow guide, who was operating the GoPro and immortalizing this Big Moment.

Katja loosened her hold on the rope and I slid through the crook in the rock and into the open air.

In my imagination, I used my descent to practice my moves, pushing off the limestone face behind the waterfall with my feet, bouncing from here to there with the grace of an astronaut navigating the moon. In reality, I probably looked more like a rescue victim hoisted by a helicopter. But as my brain started to process the reality that I wasn't going to die, I was able to take in the surroundings. The air was crisp, the sky was dotted with slow-moving clouds. I was 54 years old and in that moment I understood that my time for these kinds of adventures was limited, that in the not too distant future my bones and muscles wouldn't be able to power me through such challenges. But for the boy standing below me who wisely knew his limits, the world was waiting.

By the time I reached the ground, I was almost giddy from the sense of accomplishment. But I soon discovered that nature isn't like a play, where the most dramatic moment is also the finale. The truth is we still had more waterfalls to traverse, more canyons to hop, more life to enjoy.

Minneapolis writer Elizabeth Foy Larsen is the author of "111 Places in the Twin Cities That You Must Not Miss."