NATIONAL TREASURE

My palms are sweating and my tongue feels thick in my mouth. Above me rises a sharp grey spine of rock, undulating like a dragon’s back all the way to the summit of Mount Triglav, the iconic three-headed peak that soars over the rocky alpine valleys of Slovenia’s northwest. The peak is a kind of mountain mecca—Milan Kučan, the nation’s first prime minister, held up summiting Triglav as a sacred duty for every Slovenian—and climbers throng to its 2864m summit. I stare up at them on this sunny day. They look like ants, inching up the sheer limestone face of the towering final approach. The route is wind-whipped and near vertical and terribly exposed. If you want to be Slovenian, though, you’ve got to make the climb: Looking at the 500 vertical metres of unroped scrambling above me, I can honestly say this is no small ask.

A simple question, though: if you’re not truly Slovenian until you summit the mountain, can merely summiting Triglav make even foreigners like myself into honorary countrymen of others who have? I’m about to find out. I take one more look up, shake my head, and start off across the scree field toward the final