Borns Tunnels Mount Begunjščica Slovenia

Mount Begunjščica, Slovenia

Peter Swart, June 2026

As part of our holiday, Nadine and I embarked on a 4 day hike from Ljubelj Pass, through the lower slopes of the Karavanke Mountains to the village of Mojstrana. Day 1 of our route took us from the small border settlement of Ljubelj to the Roblekov Hut. Day two took us from Roblekov Hut to Valvasor Hut and day three ended at the Golici Hut. Day four lead us to our final destination of Mojstrana.

Within an hour of starting our walk, we passed a small cement WWII bunker, with a protected doorway and a window looking down into the valley below. Shortly after the bunker, we crossed a scree slope and entered Born's Tunnel.

The tunnel itself is about 250m long and between 1.5m and 2.5m high, with a view port over the valley below about half way through. The walls and roof of the tunnel are raw, mined rock, and the floor is uneven and rocky. In one section of the first half of the tunnel it looks like the miners dug into a natural fissure which extends upwards a little, but does not go much further.

It had been raining heavily for around 24 hours before we started, and parts of the tunnel floor were 20cm deep in water, wall to wall. With no way around the pool, and a lot of hiking still ahead of us, we decided to remove our boots before wading through the water.

The tunnel was commisioned by Karl Born, a German banker, who liked walking in these mountains. He had the tunnel dug to allow easy access to to the Prevala Mountains. Some references describe the tunnel as having lights, but they are no longer there, if they ever were. We used small head torches.

References

Born Tunnels - Prevala Mountain Pasture Bornov Tunel Bornova pot: hiking through a tunnel to Prevala Mountain