Galovac Cascades

Half-hidden in the middle of the Upper Lakes chain, the Galovac cascades are — after Veliki Slap — the most photographed waterfall system in the park. Water tumbles a total of thirty metres over a series of ivy-hung travertine dams into the bright-green Galovac Lake below, and the wooden boardwalk crosses right through the spray in a way that regularly leaves cameras wet. Late spring, when snowmelt from Mala Kapela is at full flow, is when the cascades roar; late summer softens them into lace-like veils. The Upper Lakes trail H is the least crowded of the classic Plitvice routes and takes in Galovac at roughly its midpoint — chain it with the panoramic viewpoint above the falls (a five-minute uphill detour signposted to Prošćanski Jezero) for the best photograph. Watch for endemic Plitvice trout hanging motionless in the pools between drops. The park's founding conservationist Ivo Pevalek studied travertine formation right here in the 1920s, and it was largely his research that led to Plitvice becoming a national park in 1949 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.