Drava - From Lavamünd to Vuzenica

Level of difficulty 2 |  Gastronomy 1 |  Length 21 km |  Time 3 - 4 hours

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The Drava can be paddled at a brisk pace from Austria to Slovenia. This cross-border ride leads through mountains, hills and floodplain landscapes and is easy to master even for SUP novices.

General information

• Carinthia Card/ Active Card Southern Carinthia
• Carinthia Wikipedia
• Lavanttal tourist information
• Koroška tourist information
• Tour Video
• Climate
• Wind, waves, weather

Navigation rules

The entire tour runs through a Natura 2000 protected area, which is why paddlers are asked to stay only on the water and close to the shore. Noise and rubbish are to be avoided!

There may be other watercraft such as kayaks, canoes, fishing boats and excursion rafts on the water along the tour. Please move out of the way in good time!

Most of the floodplain landscape in front of the Dravograd power plant is prohibited for navigation. Only the large basin is accessible, but not the narrow waterway branching off from it.

Be careful of fishermen, as there are fishing huts and seating areas for them along the banks of the entire route. Depending on the season and weather, you may encounter heavy fishing activity and should then avoid the banks of the Drava.

Dangers and risks

Since this tour crosses the border, you should always carry your passport with you.  

The start at the Drauspitz in Lavamünd is flat and very accessible, but the water from the power station 600 m away comes by quite quickly and intersects with the water flowing from the river Lavant. If you are unsure, kneel on the SUP for the first few minutes. This can be a good idea, because even after the mouth area, slight turbulence continues to form on the water surface causing slight instability.

Occasionally you may come across fishermen. If you see them, please avoid their fishing lines early enough. You may also sometimes come across kayaks, canoes, rafts and fishing boats, but there is always enough space to avoid them.

The floodplain landscape in front of the Dravograd power plant can be quite shallow depending on the water level. It is best to test the water depth with a paddle every now and then.

To get back on the water after the Dravograd power station, you carry your SUP over a walled, sloping bank. The water flows very quickly past the power station and thus along the bank. So here too you should kneel first and only stand up after the two bridges. Be particularly careful near the countless bridge pillars after the weir!

The final landing is to the right of the power plant in Vuzenica, leading over a small pier and a brick bank. It is best to first leave the drybags and paddles on the pier and then climb out of the water one by one. Depending on the weather and the profile of your shoes, there is a risk of slipping when climbing up to the meadow.

The last few meters to the road lead either along a narrow, short and steep path lined with prickly acacias and stinging nettles. Alternatively, you can walk 270 metres along the narrow track next to the railway line, but this can be significantly more dangerous.

As a flowing body of water, the Drava is of course always associated with a calculable risk. Wearing a life jacket is recommended. However, if you can swim well and navigate steadily on the SUP, you will have no problems along this route in normal water conditions. Paddlers will find easy conditions at the following water levels: Lavamünd measuring station: 227 cm water height, 485 m³/s flow rate, Lavamünd Grenze measuring station: 255 cm water height, 485 m³/s flow rate.

Directions

Lavamünd, and especially the starting point for this tour, is best reached by car. The small car park at Drauspitz is just as easy to reach from the Austrian side as it is from the Slovenian side. However, public transport only offers reasonably good connections from Austria. Depending on where you are coming from, it is usually a combination of bus and train.

From Lavamünd you drive to the car park in Vuzenica within 20 minutes to park the shuttle vehicle. Understandably, public transport connections are better within Slovenia. However, there are no reasonable connections from Austria or back to Austria.

National and international bus, train and flight connections can be found via the comparison portals Omio, Busbud as well as RailEurope. If you arrive by plane, you will either land in Klagenfurt or Ljubljana – the closest airports in the region.

Parking

The Drauspitz in Lavamünd offers ideal conditions for the start of the tour. There are three parking spaces and a public toilet facility just a few meters from the starting point. There is enough space for tour preparations.

If you are not picked up in Vuzenica but instead park a shuttle car, you can do so in the car park diagonally opposite the train station. From the landing it is about 700 m on foot to the car.

Swimming

Along the entire route, the Drava flows at a speed of several km/h. It is less dammed here than in large parts of Carinthia upstream. Swimming is therefore not recommended!

If you still dare to cool off in summer with the water temperature below 20°C, you should always connect yourself to the board with the leash in order to have a life raft. Wearing a life jacket is highly recommended, at least for less experienced paddlers.

There are also a number of smaller pools and bathing lakes near Lavamünd, such as the nice bathing lakes in Lavamünd and St. Andrä and the adventure pool in St. Paul.

Tour

From the Drauspitz in Lavamünd to the power plant in Vuzenica.

Length

21 km

Time

3 - 4 hours

Start and landing

Start at the Drauspitz in Lavamünd.

Land on the right in front of the power plant in Vuzenica.

SUP rental

None

SUPing for cross-border paddlers

After the Drava River forms a seemingly endless chain of beautiful reservoirs across large parts of Carinthia, its characteristics change significantly from Lavamünd onwards. The last Drava power station on the Austrian side marks the start of faster sections of the river all the way to Slovenia, which means that entertaining hours on the water are guaranteed.

Fortunately, the community of Lavamünd offers ideal starting conditions close to the border on the Austrian side. Directly behind the flood-protected bank there is a newly built car park including a toilet container, where we can pump up our boards.

The weather is overcast, but that doesn't mean we want to wait for more photogenic conditions. After all, optimal paddling weather is becoming rare this late in the year. Due to the relatively warm air for the end of October we dare to hit the water anyway.

From the car park, it's a few metres to the confluence of the Lavant and the Drava. The area is called Drauspitz and offers an easy start to the adventure via a flat gravel bank. But you should watch out for the overcutting waves to keep your balnance and stay dry for longer.

You paddle back and forth between Slovenia and Austria almost unnoticed, because the state border runs right through the river for a distance of about four kilometers. Shortly before the state border, we paddle past a raft, which is in operation from May to October and offers cross-border excursions to the Slovenian region of Koroška with music and traditional food.

That's where we are headed today, and along the route we keep discovering small, sometimes makeshift fishing huts and places to sit between the trees. We only see a few fishermen, though. Apart from the noise of the nearby roads, we only hear the occasional chirping of birds and are rewarded with views of lush green meadows stretching from the shore up into the adjacent forests. The gloomy cloud cover and the autumn leaves give the first few kilometers on the water a Scottish atmosphere. We don't yet know that later the sun will also delight us with a late summer ambience.

In between we float past cow and sheep pastures, the foothills of which extend to the water. Today, however, the animals are more on the sidelines and seem to avoid the river. The entire area is very agriculturally structured, which is also evident in the architecture of the small settlements.

Many ancient wooden buildings and agricultural barracks pass by and I somehow feel transported back in time. To Yugoslavia before the Kosovo war, when today's Slovenia was nowhere near as economically developed and life was more traditional.

Meanwhile, time flies on the water and we are already approaching the church in Dravograd, under which the Drava makes another dominant turn to the right. Shortly afterwards, we paddle into the floodplain landscape of a small side arm, the water of which is not particularly deep.

We can only imagine how beautiful the colors of this small oasis must be in the sunshine. The last river bend before the power plant provides us with almost stagnant water, which is why the area is also called Dravograd Lake (Dravograjsko jezero).

It was created by the construction of the power plant during the Second World War, and the surface of the lake gradually turned into a swamp with islands and reeds. Of the 150 species of water birds counted here, we only see one today - a lonely swan which is obviously not bothered by us.

So that all of its colleagues can remain undisturbed, a traffic sign prohibits paddling further away from the main basin of this floodplain landscape. After all, it is also part of the Natura 2000 protected area, just like all the other sections of the river along this tour.

So after a short exploration, we leave the pleasant reed landscape again and navigate to the small slipway on the headland opposite. You could paddle a few hundred meters further to the power plant and go ashore there, but in doing so you would ignore the prohibition signs put up in the river.

Instead, we make sure not to step into the swans' excrement at the slipway, take a short break and then walk 650 m to the other side of the power station. You could end the tour here in Dravograd after a 9 km SUP trip and would also find opportunities to park your shuttle vehicle in the area around the slipway, especially since there is also a small bar here.

The footpath to the re-entry leads past pleasant vegetable gardens and nice private houses and ends at the stone riverbank. The view of the roaring water is impressive, but not frightening. We quickly find a good place to put in at the end of the built up bank and carry our boards down to the water. Please proceed carefully here, because the slope can easily cause you to slip depending on your shoe profile and the weather.

At the water, it is best to place the SUP in the direction of flow to avoid having to turn upstream against the fast water. Light and overlapping waves as well as speeds of several km/h invite you to glide kneeling towards the two bridges .

The two bridges in particular are a challenge, as we have never seen so many bridge pillars in such a small space. Nevertheless, there is enough room between them to pass through and it is fun to tame the waves a little. Experienced paddlers master this passage standing up, the rest sit or kneel. That's it for Dravograd and the next few kilometers we ride briskly through the hinterland of Koroška.

Contrary to expectations, the clouds open up around midday and we even get to enjoy warm rays of sunshine. Picture-book autumn colours and steep mountain slopes to the left and right of us brighten our moods. At times you'd think you were paddling somewhere in East Tyrol, because this Slovenian strip of land is so confusingly similar. This idea is not far-fetched, especially since the Drava, after originating as a torrent in South Tyrol, actually flows through East Tyrol before becoming the paddling river as we know it.

Again we paddle past cute settlements and watch as the land slowly expands. The steep slopes become more and more flat meadows with a much higher population density. At the bridge in the village of Trbonje we witness a fire brigade operation and think back to how dangerous the working life of a raftsman must have been when the Drava was still unregulated and the only way to transport wood was via the wild waters of this river.

As early as 1403, iron was transported along the Drava alongside wood, and the peak of raft logistics probably occurred in 1907, when 1,125 rafts set off south from Upper Carinthia. Of course, this dangerous task resulted in many fatal accidents, and with the advent of better transport solutions, this traditional, hard and sometimes life-threatening method of transport logistics disappeared completely. More information about the so-called Carinthian Timber Road can be found online and as a PDF download (both in German).

The rafters were probably the first stand-up paddlers on the Drava and most likely much more daring than we will ever be. The many weirs are often a curse because they tame the water and make paddling more strenuous. On the other hand, they make the Drava paddleable for almost everyone and, above all, safely. Just before the bridge lies the Koroški Splavarji rafting company, which has been providing an entertaining program on the water since 2000.

Appropriately, their excursion raft comes towards us on the last few meters of this tour and we listen to the typical sounds of the harmonica before heading left into the last floodplain landscape of the day. Shortly before the Vuzenica power station, the Drava forms two islands thanks to a 500 m long branch, which we do not want to miss.

The river still has a pleasant flow and sucks us surprisingly quickly through the branch. We enjoy the autumnal vegetation with the already bare trees one last time before heading across the water to the end of the tour on the right bank of the Drava.

There is a brick jetty 150 m before the power station. To find it, keep to the right bank, passing by the prohibition sign and carefully gliding towards the small pier. Be careful when getting off, as the pier is quite high and sometimes not completely dry. Concentration is also important when climbing up the sloping stone wall. As soon as you are up on the meadow, there are two ways to get onto the road.

You can either walk left 270 m along the railway line until you reach the nearby railway crossing, or you can walk straight across the railway line from the landing and discover a narrow path through the bushes. It also leads up to the road, but it's steep, earthy, slippery and surrounded by nettles and thorny black locusts.

Both paths take just a few minutes to reach the car park at the local train station, where our second car is parked. We choose the safer but also less comfortable option via the steep path, but we don't know whether it is as accessible in summer. It's quite possible it is too overgrown during the warm season.

In any case, after this wonderful tour, we are definitely up for a tasty lunch, and this is exactly what we are offered at the Pizzeria Monini. We recommend the pulled pork burger and the calamari dishes. The drink prices were obviously capped 10 years ago and invite you to have a second glass. Cheers and have a good meal!

Alternatives: As already mentioned, this tour can be halved by paddling only to Dravograd and exiting the water there in front of the power plant. You can also start the tour under the power plant in Dravograd and paddle about 11 km to Vuzenica. Of course it is also possible to continue paddling along the Drava from Vuzenica. To Maribor, for example, it is about 45 km, which can be done in one day.