While half a million people a year shuffle along the Camino de Santiago, a brand-new Slovenian long trail is quietly offering the opposite experience: alpine valleys, waterfall-side wine bars, and barely another hiker in sight.
The Kamnik-Savinja Alps Water Trail (KSAWT) is a 191-mile loop through Slovenia's second-largest mountain range, broken into 11 stages that link more than a dozen historic villages. Expect three lakes, four rivers, countless waterfalls and over 200 springs and streams — the route was born from a 2022 project that mapped 54 pristine natural springs, some naturally carbonated with iron and minerals. Signage explains the geology, and hikers are invited to taste-test the springs and compare notes against published mineral profiles. It's a strange, wonderful side quest you won't find on any American trail.
One highlight is the Logar Valley, where the path follows the aquamarine Savinja River past a tiny pub pouring wild-fermented wines and berry liqueurs, then climbs toward Rinka Waterfall, a 300-foot plunge into a blue pool. A cantilevered hike-in café clings to the cliff halfway up the falls, and a Scandinavian-style mountain lodge run by the Alpine Association of Slovenia offers affordable beds nearby.
Unlike Slovenia's brutally steep cross-country Mountain Trail — 14 peaks above 7,000 feet and only about 10,000 completions since 1953 — the water trail is deliberately gentle. Stages average 10.6 miles a day, skipping summits like 8,392-foot Grintovec in favour of valleys, meadows and swim spots. Electric shuttle vans along nearby roads make slackpacking easy, and mountain huts keep costs down. Stopovers include the medieval fortress town of Kamnik and Lake Črnava, backed by a 16th-century castle and a wall of 7,000-foot peaks.
The food is a genuine draw. Wines here use old, unusual grape varietals and techniques like whole-cluster fermentation and native yeasts, producing flavours far from your standard merlot. Pair them with zgornjesavinjski želodec, a pressed cured pork speciality from the Savinja valley, or Trnič — pyramid-shaped cheeses that shepherds on the high Velika Planina plateau still make by hand from cottage cheese, cream and salt.
Slovenia itself is roughly the size of Massachusetts yet packs in some 6,200 miles of marked trails, and the backpacking world has started calling it Europe's hidden gem. For anyone who wants world-class hiking, real mountain culture and no crowds, this loop may be the best new route on the continent.