THE crowds that flock to Lake Bled like parched game to an African watering hole don’t bother Simon Koščak in the slightest. He watches them with perplexed detachment from his lofty vantage point, 10km away and more than a kilometre up. This is Roblekov Dom – Slovenia’s prettiest and most totemic mountain hut.

Attend any folk festival in these parts and it won’t be long before the strains of Na Roblek bom odsel (I’m going to Roblek) fill the clear mountain air. Few Slovenes won’t know it by heart. It’s a song about romantic love; a young man whisking his lover off to this forest-fringed eyrie high up in the Karawanks range. But more than that, it’s a paean to the mountain culture that underpins so much of Slovenian life.

The building itself – dark wood exterior, gabled roof at least two sizes too big – is blessed with an imperious setting: a sun-splashed ridge on the southwest flanks of 2,060m Mount Begunščica. It sleeps 30, with a terrace that seats perhaps double that. As hut manager, 50-year-old Koščak is here year round. He gets some support at weekends, but mostly it’s just him and the incessant, all-consuming peace.

A chopper delivery every 10 days drops off supplies. It lands on a makeshift grass helipad out front no bigger than an allotment. At other times, Koščak might trek up the steeply corkscrewing path from the valley below with a backpack stuffed with essentials such as sausages, beans and sauerkraut for jota, the traditional Slovenian stew that’s a staple of mountain menus. He’s fit, like most Slovenes, so it’s not a problem.

When it’s quiet he takes breakfast out on the terrace, feasting on views that stretch from the alluvial plains of Ljubljana to the southeast, past the coach-tour frenzy of Lake Bled and on to the snow-capped peaks of the Julian Alps beyond. Unfathomable in Bled, he can go days without a guest.

Our arrival ends one such hiatus, thick cloud and intermittent drizzle keeping the early-season hikers at bay. Koščak greets myself and my trekking guide, Boštjan Mikuž, with a warm handshake and, mindful that it’s as near as damn it midday, a shot of potent, bitter liquor made from the root of the great yellow gentian flower which grows in the Alpine pastures here.

The 50-year-old is short of stature, with oval features eroded into a craggy amiability. He exudes an air of unhurriedness that seems to permeate the entire cabin. At length he cooks up some steaming jota and pulls up a chair at our table, uninvited yet entirely welcome. We chat as we eat. As we do, through the window the cloud begins to dissipate like a de-misted windscreen and we see flashes of those fabled views.

“When the sun comes out it can get busy,” says Koščak, following my gaze. Cooking 100 meals a day is not unheard of. But when the weather draws in, so does the peace. “Then, I’m alone. Alone with nature.”

When we come to pay, Koščak waves away the money with a dismissive waft of the hand, shakes our hands again, then insists on escorting us down to the junction of the path a couple of hundred metres below lest we miss the turning for our onward route.

Hospitality among Slovenia’s nationally treasured network of mountain huts, I’m quickly discovering, is not something that’s taken lightly.