The news of the alleged disappearance of the face of the Ajdovska Girl from the slopes of Prisojnik due to a rockfall has spread across Slovenia. In JZ TNP, we are using this opportunity to raise awareness about rockfalls.
Employees of the Public Institute Triglav National Park (JZ TNP) have checked the information about the alleged disappearance of the Ajdovska Girl from the wall of Prisojnik due to a rockfall and refuted it. Nevertheless, in the Public Institute Triglav National Park (JZ TNP), we are using the opportunity to emphasize that the entire Triglav National Park is a preserved natural area of the mountain world with natural processes, where rockfalls, falling rocks, landslides, weathering, and other processes are characteristic of this area. It is precisely because of them that this area is so geomorphologically diverse and is at the same time one of the reasons why most of the Julian Alps is protected as a national park at all.
A few months ago, we prepared a professional lecture on rockfalls as a natural phenomenon in new climatic conditions, which took place at the Infocenter Triglavska roža in Bled. The lecturer Dr. Mateja Jemec Auflič from the Geological Survey of Slovenia emphasized that changes in air temperature and precipitation regime are becoming increasingly evident across Europe. While we often discuss their direct impacts, less known—but no less important—are their secondary effects, such as the impact on the stability of mountain slopes.
How do rockfalls form?
Rockfalls are a natural part of long-term geological processes—the result of tectonics, weathering, and other events in the Earth's crust. But although these processes occur very slowly, the formation of a rockfall is often sudden and unpredictable. Therefore, the question arises again and again: What triggers a rockfall? And how exactly does it happen?
In the lecture, the lecturer presented the formation of rockfalls and explained how rapid temperature changes cause thermal shocks and thus changes in tension in the rocks, leading to the formation of rockfalls. She also illuminated why climate change, with increasingly frequent extreme weather events, is changing the rules of the game—and why understanding these processes is more important today than ever before.
Legend of the Ajdovska Girl
One of the most famous legends from Triglav National Park is also associated with the Ajdovska Girl. The Ajdovska Girl lived under the walls of Prisank and led travelers through snowy drifts over Vršič to Trenta. She also visited young mothers and prophesied the fate of newborns to them.
One night, she prophesied to a sleeping child in Trenta that he would become a hunter and shoot Zlatorog and with his horns reach fabulous wealth. When the sisters of the Ajdovska Girl heard about this prophecy, they cursed her because she predicted the death of Zlatorog. Thus, she petrified when she returned under Prisojnik and still stares in astonishment with large stone eyes into the Trenta Valley.
You can watch the entire lecture on rockfalls by Dr. Mateja Jemec Auflič here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdFl1Ma4pbc&t=1s Source:
https://www.tnp.si/sl/javni-zavod/medijsko-sredisce/novice/novica/379/ob-vesti-o-domnevnem-izginotju-obraza-ajdovske-deklice-.html